416 
AUSTRALIAN TERM J TIDJE, 
upon their habits having come to me from all quarters), that I 
am enabled to enlarge my observations and add much to our 
general knowledge of their distribution and habits. 
I have also had the advantage, in earlier years, of travelling 
over a considerable portion of the interior of Australia, and after- 
wards round the whole coast, and therefore start with a personal 
knowledge of these pests in many phases of camp life, and a fair 
idea of their distribution over this great island. 
Part I. — Distribution. 
In going into the literature on " white ants," I have consulted 
a great number of works of voyages and travels, as well as the 
scientific papers available; and during these investigations I have 
been much struck with certain interesting facts relating to the 
geographical distribution of termites. Therefore, before Rearing 
with the Australian species, I propose to glance at those from 
other parts of the world. 
In the fossil fauna of the Old World termites are very well 
represented; evidently in bygone epochs, as now, at certain 
seasons of the year the winged forms swarmed in myriads out of 
the nests. Fluttering about in their generally aimless manner, 
many of them alighted upon the soft resin coating the trunks of the 
pine trees, and became entombed. It is a noticeable fact that 
nearly all the fossil species have been described from winged 
forms, no soldiers or workers of most of them being met with. 
The resin changed to amber has retained the remnants of the 
prehistoric insect world, and it is to its preservative powers that 
we owe most of our knowledge of the fossil termites, though 
others have been described from other formations both from 
Europe and America. 
In 1848 Professor Heer published his " Ueber f ossile Ameisen"* 
describing the fossil insects from the Tertiary beds of Oeningen 
and Radoboj. This, the first systematical study of the fossil 
* Afterwards translated and published in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soe. 
London, vi. 1850. 
