415 
AUSTRALIAN TEEMlTWM. 
Part I. 
By Walter W. Froggatt. 
INTRODUCTION. 
These notes on white ants were first undertaken with the 
intention of working out the economic aspect of their life-history, 
more especially their partiality for certain timbers more than 
others, and the best methods of exterminating them. 
There is no family of insects in the warmer and tropical por- 
tions of the earth's surface whose members wage such ceaseless 
warfare against man's handiwork. From their countless numbers, 
subterranean habits, and insidious manner of attack, none are 
more difficult to cope with; for often it is not until the damage is 
complete that their presence is even suspected. In Australia 
alone thousands of pounds worth of property is annually destroyed 
by these voracious pests. Having started on this subject, I found 
both material and notes accumulate so rapidly that I determined 
(without losing sight of the earlier phase of the question) to 
expand my notes into a more pretentious work, namely, the study 
of the habits and life-histories of all the Australian species 
obtainable, recording my observations when possible from living 
specimens. 
With this end in view, I obtained the sanction of the Curator 
G f the Technological Museum (Mr. J. H. Maiden), who has also 
greatly assisted me in many ways at this work, to print and issue 
a circular from the Museum, asking for specimens and giving 
brief instructions to residents of termite-infested country how to 
collect them. 
It is from the generous way in which my valued correspondents, 
many of them personally unknown to me (specimens and notes 
