157 



AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 



OF THE 



STRAITS 



AND 



FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 



No. 5.] MAY, 1908. [Vol. VI 



NOTES ON TERMES GESTROI AND OTHER 

 SPECIES OF TERMITES FOUND ON RUBBER 

 ESTATES IN THE F. M. S. 



By H. E. Pratt. 



General. 



Termites or as they are popularly known "White Ants" are 

 really very far removed from the true ants, being more nearly allied to 

 the primitive insects of this epoch, and resembling ants merely in their 

 remarkable social organization. 



Up to the present time some 150 species of Termites have been 

 described from various parts of the world, but of these comparatively 

 few have been studied with any degree of completeness. That this 

 should be so seems mainly attributable to two causes viz : their cryp- 

 tic habits, and the multiplicity of individuals and number of castes 

 existing among a single species, thus rendering any careful and 

 exhaustive observations on their life histories a very long and arduous 

 task. 



Considerable knowledge of termite life has been gained since cer- 

 tain species came into prominence as pests to agriculture, tea and 

 cocoa having suffered considerably in Ceylon and the Philippines respec- 

 tively. Besides being destructive to living tissue, termites are deserv- 

 edly feared on account of the enormous amount of damage wrought by 

 them to wooden structures of almost every description. 



The insidious way in which termites invade houses, riddling the 

 planks of the floor, supports to the house and the furniture, and leav- 

 ing behind them but a mere outer shell, will be familiar to many of 

 those people who have resided in the tropics. 



Besides however being the cause of this destruction they are re- 

 sponsible for the advent of a species of small ant (Camponotus, sp.) which 

 utilizes the vacated burrows of termites to make its nest, and becomes 

 in a very short space of time an unmitigated nuisance in the house. 



