ig,3 Light: Notes on Philippine Termites, I 247 
found among descriptions of animals, etc., in a History of Mex- 
ico by Hernandez, published in 1651. 4 Here again the animal 
concerned is given the name sulum and is believed by Hagen to 
be the same termite. 
The third and last of these early descriptions of Philippine 
animals believed by Hagen to refer to termites is found in an 
article, describing various Philippine animals, written by the 
Jesuit Father Camel (Camelli) and communicated by Petiver 5 
in 1709 to the Royal Philosophical Society of London. 
According to Hagen, who quotes extensively, Camelli gives 
descriptions of fourteen species of “ants” from the Philippines, 
of which Hagen believes that five possibly apply to termites. 
The first of these he believes to be the same as the sulum of 
Nieremberg and of Hernandez and gives it the name bondoc 
which means in Philippine dialects “mountain” or “hill” and 
is never used to mean ant or termite. It seems probable that 
Father Camelli misunderstood his informants and substituted 
the name of the habitat for that of the animal. The descrip- 
tion he gives seems to suggest a termite, particularly with re- 
gard to the size of the queen or, as he puts it, the king and the 
form of the nest. The animals, however, are spoken of as being 
black. Hagen believed this to be a description of Termes carbo- 
narius, which is darker than most termites. Unfortunately for 
this surmise, T. carbonarius has not been recorded from the 
Philippines. While this does not by any means -prove that the 
species does not exist here, it suggests that T. carbonarius is 
not among our common forms, and consequently it is rather 
improbable that specimens of this species were found among 
the first known termites. 
But for their habitat (“cushions and pillows!”), which has 
h never been noted for a termite, the second of these descriptions 
might well apply to one of the smaller wood-attacking species, 
such as those of the genus Coptotermes or Micro cerotermes, 
since he describes the insects as small, white, and about the 
size of a louse. To these he gives the name cuyutil, which I 
have not been able to place in any Philippine dialect, and speaks 
of the insects as living in cushions and pillows where they 
make their nests of clay. The word cuitib is used in Tagalog for 
* “Hernandez, animalium etc. Mexican, historia Romae. fol. 1651, im an- 
gehangten liber unicus etc., p. 76.” Hagen, Linnea Ent. 10 (1855) 29. 
6 “De variis animalibus Philippinensibus ex Mss. Geo. Jos. Camelli com- 
municavit Petiver. Philos. Transact. 1709, vol. 26, No. 318.” Hagen, Linnea 
Ent. 12 (1858) 247. 
