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As early as 1893-94, I began to lose an enormous number of 

 coffee trees from the attacks of what everyone then called " white 

 ants/' No remedies were apparently of any avail, though with 

 some, notably u London purple," I succeeded in killing the tree 

 a trifle sooner than the white ant did, and at last I came to the 

 conclusion that the thing to do was if possible to destroy the 

 queens, accordingly I offered a substantial reward for each queen 

 brought to my Bungalow; this was the beginning of my experience 

 of " digging," numbers of coolies turned out every evening, 

 attacked the mounds of which there were thousands every where 

 and my original reward dropped with leaps and bounds as the 

 queens began to come in, until even at 5 cents each the amount 

 paid out became a very considerable item in my monthly expen- 

 diture. To my great disappointment, how; ver, there was no de- 

 crease at all in the attacks upon my coffee, and, puzzled by this, 

 I sent specimens to Mr. E. E. Green, a personal friend of mine 

 and now, the Ceylon Government Entomologist. In due course 

 I received the pleasing intimation that whilst the collection of 

 queens, of which I had stated myself possessed, was exceedingly 

 interesting as a monument of energy on the part of my coolies, 

 its practical value was nil, inasmuch as it was clear from the 

 specimens which I had forwarded that I was waging war against 

 the wrong species\ This opinion having been confirmed by Mr. 

 Ridley who identified the insects which were doing all the 

 damage as termes gestroi, the queen of which he told me had been 

 very seldom found, I gave up digging, and confined myself to 

 cleaning the ants off the stems as far as possible and destroying 

 what I could see, which did a certain amount of good, but not 

 very much, as they often ate right up the centre of the tree and 

 were not visible from the outside. In those days we had not 

 commenced planting rubber, and coffee never having been very 

 severely attacked on any other estates, not much attention was 

 paid to the matter, when, however, our Para, Rembong and coco- 

 nuts trees, in the " Ulu " and the coast districts alike, began to 

 suffer from the ravages of these pests, every conceivable remedy 

 was tried and persisted with. Roots were bared and kept open 

 to the air, painted with tar, washed with Bordeaux mixture solu- 

 tions of tuba root, vasamboo (sweet flag), jey's disenfectant, etc., 

 in the case of coconuts large quantities of salt were dug in close 

 round the base of the tree, clumps of cuscus grass were planted 

 close up against the stems of the rubber trees, and everything 

 tried which seemed to offer the smallest chance of success. I have 

 calculated that where effected trees could be treated every second 

 or third day, the actual mortality was, with the assistance of these 

 remedies, kept down to about 5% to 6 % of the trees actually 

 attacked, but the expense was of course very heavy, as the same 

 tree had to be attended to times without number before the ter- 

 mites moved on. Then came Mr. B.WLEY'S wonderful effort upon 

 Lowlands where more damage was being done than on any Estate 

 in Selangor ; judging that a thorough digging all over would be of 

 great benefit to his coffee and would at the same time, probably, 



