98 



Termes Gestroi, however, is a very serious pest and 

 it was in recognition of this fact, that, in my various en- 

 deavours to exterminate it, I collected a large number of 

 queen termites; these I showed to Messrs. Caruthers and 

 Pratt, who were much interested, as the queens evidently 

 belonged to two or more species and it was quite possi- 

 ble the Queen Gestroi, which had hitherto never been 

 found, was amongst the collection. This resulted in the 

 investigation by Mr. Pratt and I have been fortunate in 

 being in possession of the valuable discoveries made by 

 him, for a considerable time before they were published. 

 Previous to Mr. Pratt's discoveries with regard to the 

 habits of T. Gestroi I was much afraid that the pest 

 would prove to be a heavy handicap to the Malay Penin- 

 sula in its competition with other rubber producing coun- 

 tries in the future and a serious though unseen and there- 

 fore unrecognized loss, in the present. I am now quite 

 satisfied, however, that it can be altogether eradicated. In 

 my endeavours to exterminate the pest as expeditiously 

 and as cheaply as possible I have arrived at some con- 

 clusions and methods which may be of use to my brother 

 planters. 



The following notes refer to flat alluvial land:— 



Timbers containing termitaria of Termes Gestroi. 



The determination of these is of the utmost import- 

 ance and rests largely with planters themselves. In 

 different localities the trees affected may vary and if 

 planters were to publish either in the Agricultural Bulletin 

 or in the local papers the names of trees and their localities 

 in which the termitaria of T. Gestroi have been found, they 

 will be performing a great service to the rubber industry 

 in Alalaya. So far, in this particular locality, i.e., North 

 Bank of the Selangor River, I have found the termitaria 

 exclusively in Kumpas and Meranti logs and roots but 

 chiefly in Kumpas, this, I think, is due to the fact that 

 about two thirds of the planted area, consists of reclaimed 

 land in which Kumpas, owing to its great hardness and 

 durability, is practically the only timber left to deal with. 



Both Kumpas and Meranti appear to grow in greater 

 abundance in land at all inclined to be peaty and this no 

 doubt is the reason for the opinion of some planters that 

 peaty soils encourage T. Gestroi, as mentioned in Mr. 

 Pratt's note. 



