I 
TERMITES IN THE UNITED STATES. 19 
longitudinal tunnels or viaducts, constructed by termites often can 
be observed between crevices in the bark of infested dead and living 
trees to a considerable distance above the ground. 
DAMAGE TO FIELD CROPS. 
In the Southern States termites occasionally injure the stems and 
roots of a great variety of apparently healthy field crops, including 
both grain and truck crops, among which may be listed corn, cotton, 
sugar cane, rice, grasses, and a great variety of garden vegetables. 
In Kansas the species lucifugus is reported to inhabit dry vegetable 
and fibrous substances. 
Injury of this character has been only occasionally recorded, and 
in consequence there has been, and is, considerable doubt as to whether 
termites are capable of attacking perfectly healthy living plants, it 
being usually considered that the plants attacked were previously 
either diseased or injured. However, termites are capable of such 
primary attack, although such injury in every case is not necessarily 
primary. 
Comstock, as early as 1879, stated that in the Southern States 
termites infest living plants such as sugar cane (Florida) and 
pampas grass (Texas), attacking that part of the plant which is at 
cr just below the surface of the ground. The bases or stalks of 
pampas grass are hollowed; in case of sugar cane the most serious 
injury is the destruction of the seed cane. On July 6, 1915, T. E. 
Holloway found workers and soldiers of Leucotermes sp. in burrows 
of Diatraea in sugar cane at New Orleans, La. 
Kent states that at Roxie, Miss., termites 1 destroyed a good many 
cotton stalks during the summer of 1887, attacking the stalk just 
below the soil and eating out the interior, which would kill the 
plant in every instance. 
F. H. Chittenden records injury to roots of cranberry at Borden- 
town, N. J.; also, in cases where the species of termite was not 
determined, to young squash plants at Brownsville, Mercedes, and 
Mission, Tex. 
COTTON. 
W. D. Hunter, in charge of Southern Field Crop Insect Investi- 
gations, has furnished the following field notes. 
H. Pinkus, on June 22, 1910, in a cotton field on an irrigated 
farm at Lampasas, Tex., noticed many dead plants and some dying 
at certain places between healthy plants. Upon digging up the 
ground he discovered termites 2 destroying the stem about 2 inches 
below the surface of the soil, a hole being bored through the stem 
and into the heart of the plant; some plants were recently killed. 
Pinkus stated that on June 30, 1910, in a cotton field at Granbury, 
1 Leucotermes flavipes. 2 Leucotermes lucifugus. 
