BY WALTER W. FROGGATT. 
431 
evident that the fate of the community does not hang upon the 
prolongation of the gravid queen, as it is not at all a difficult 
matter to replace her with a young and vigorous successor when 
necessary. 
From my own observations I do not think that the queen of 
any Australian species either lays eggs so rapidly or lives so long. 
I have on several occasions unearthed a queen in a very sickly 
looking condition, with her abdomen yellow and wrinkled, and 
with her antennas and most of the tarsi broken off, though the 
nest from which she was taken was swarming w T ith life and 
apparently in the height of prosperity. 
I should not be surprised to find that many of the larger mound 
nests last for a great number of years, and that white ants may also 
exist in their nests long after they have destroyed all the woody 
matter they contain, for in the tropical parts of Australia before 
the wet season sets in (about the middle of December) they stored 
food supplies. When examining some of the large rounded 
termite mounds near King's Sound (N.W. Australia) I found on 
cutting into them that all the outer galleries were full of bits of 
grass cut up like fine chaff, which ran out in little streams to the 
ground as soon as the passages were opened. 
Professor Drummond* in his account of African termites pre- 
viously quoted, notices the immense amount of clay carried up the 
trunks of trees by these insects, w T hich, he suggests, when it is 
swept down by the tropical rains and is scattered over the 
surrounding land is a great agent towards fertilizing the soil, and 
that termites probably take the place of the earthworms of more 
temperate regions. This statement requires confirmation, for in 
the first instance the soil used by the termites is gathered from 
the surface of the ground, and whenever a large mound has been 
destroyed in this country I have always noticed that nothing 
grew upon or near it for a long time, but it had a dry, barren 
appearance as if the clay had been burnt. t 
Drummond. Tropical Africa, I.e. 
