CH. V FAUNA OF TALIS SE 103 



again on to new piles, and, with my large collections of 

 jars and glass bottles, I was naturally anxious that no such 

 accident should happen to mine. I was not long in dis- 

 covering that it is almost impossible to cope with these 

 active and industrious termites. As is well known to every 

 one who has travelled in the tropical East, the white ants 

 make httle sand or mud tunnels up the trunks of trees or 

 through the beams and piles of dwelling-houses. One of these 

 tunnels ran from the ground to the roof of my house, and I 

 tried the experiment of destroying it completely every morn- 

 ing for about three weeks to see if I could induce the colony 

 to desert my house. Every morning the tunnel and some 

 hundreds of the blind, stupid-looking termites were destroyed, 

 but they never swerved an inch from what they considered 

 to be their path of duty, and immediately set to work to build 

 a new tunnel in precisely the same place. Smearing the 

 pile with turpentine caused them to divert the course of the 

 tunnel to one side or the other. I thought that I had won 

 the battle when I painted a ring of turpentine round the 

 pile, but two or three days afterwards the busy httle crea- 

 tures had surmounted the obstacle and the tunnel was 

 complete. One evening in the month of September I was 

 visited by a swarm of the winged sexual forms of these 

 termites. I was writing in my inner room when they 

 arrived, and, on account of the great numbers of them 

 which fell on the table, dropped their wings, and then pro- 

 ceeded to chase one another over paper, pens, and into the 

 ink, I was obUged to desist. 



The great Heteropoda spiders were a great nuisance on 

 account of their predaceous habits. When I was arranging 

 or labelling my insect collections and left the table for a 

 moment, I was sure to find on my return one of these ugly 

 brutes running off with my most cherished specimens. 

 They were perfectly fearless, and frequently annoyed me by 



