480 
T ermes 11 mbrinus . 
This species nests in the stumps of dead trees and is often 
seen on the march in enormous numbers frequently travelling a 
distance of two or three hundred yards in columns a couple of 
inches wide. It apparently feeds on dead leaves, twigs, etc., and 
is occasionally seen in houses situated near jungle, but does not 
do any harm. 
V. — Natural Habitat and Surroundings of 
Termes Gestroi. 
Under normal conditions — i,e ., on unopened land — Termes 
gestroi, the only white ant with which we are concerned as an 
agricultural pest, is by no means a common species in the 
Federated Malay States. 
It has beerr met with, but only sporadically, in low-lying 
jungle in the Kuala Selangor and Kuala Lumpur districts, and 
is fairly common in the neighbourhood of Rantau Panjang and 
behind Morib. 
So far as has been observed, it is scarce or does not occur on 
granite and limestone soils, nor at any great elevation. Low 
laterite hills, covered with small jungle, and older jungle growing 
on land with a heavy clay sub-soil are the most favoured localities, 
but as it has been met with outside the zone of cultivation only 
on some twelve or fourteen occasions it is unwise to dogmatise 
on the point. It is evident that wherever it exists some natural 
cause must keep it rigidly in check, as otherwise the trees on 
which it feeds would probably become extinct. 
VI. — Reasons for Present Abundance. 
Its present abundance is only an instance of what frequently 
happens when the balance of nature is interfered with by the 
operations of man, and one has only to mention as a case in 
point, the plague of voles which occurred some years ago in the 
South of Scotland and which was directly traced to high game 
preserving and the consequent destruction of owls and hawks, 
the natural enemies of the insectivore. 
The Phylloxera, too, originally an American insect, w r as never 
seriously dangerous to American vines, whose roots possessed the 
power of accommodation to the insect’s attack. But when the 
American vine stocks, and with them the Phylloxera , were intro- 
duced into Europe, the native vines, which had not acquired this 
resisting power, were rapidly attacked and destroyed. 
The conditions under which Para rubber is reputed to grow 
in its native forests are not such as would favour the co-existence 
of any great number of termites. The tree, therefore, when 
transported to this country, has to contend with difficulties to 
which the native Malayan trees have, under the stimulus of natu- 
ral selection, become largely immune, and the increase of an 
otherwise unimportant member of the local insect fauna is 
abnormally stimulated. 
