AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED JflAliAY STATES. 
No. 12.1 DECEMBER. [Vol. iii. 
REPORT ON TERMES GESTROI AS AFFECTING 
PARA RUBBER (HEVEA BRASILIENSIS.) 
By Herbert C. Robinson, Curator , Selangor State Museum. 
I. — General. 
The Termitidce , or family of white ants, are a division of 
the Neuroptera, almost exclusively confined to the tropics, and 
numbering about 150 known species, arranged m four or five 
genera. The group has, however, been but little studied and 
probably includes at least 2,000 species. They are most abundant 
in Africa, Northern Australia and the Indo-Malayan region, but 
appear to be by no means so universally distributed in tropical 
South America. From the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, which 
are probablv better known as regards their termite fauna than 
any other part of the world, about sixty species have been recorded 
referable to two genera, while very many more remain to be 
described. , . - 
The family has not hitherto been considered as very destructive 
to living' plants. An unrecorded species (probably 7 . taprobanes) 
is knowil to destroy ram bong seedlings in Assam, while another 
( T . Uavipes) damages fruit trees in Florida by girdling them 
beneath the surface of the ground. 
II. — Systematic. 
The Malayan species are included in two genera, Calolermcs 
and Termes. ~ Members of the former genus, which is not very 
extensive, are nestless, do not as a rule build covered ways, and 
