98 
Tenues Gestroi , however, is a very serious pest and 
it was in recognition of this fact, that, in my various en- 
deavours to exterminate it, I collected a large number of 
queen termites; these I showed to Messrs. Caruthers and 
Pratt, who were much interested, as the queens evidently 
belonged to two or more species and it was quite possi- 
ble the Queen Gestroi , which bad hitherto never been 
found, was amongst the collection. This resulted in the 
investigation by Mr. Pratt and I have been fortunate in 
being in possession of the valuable discoveries made by 
him, for a considerable time before they were published. 
Previous to Mr. Pratt’s discoveries with regard to the 
habits of T, Gestroi I was much afraid that the pest 
would prove to be a heavy handicap to the Malay Penin- 
sula in its competition with other rubber producing coun- 
tries in the future and a serious though unseen and there- 
fore unrecognized loss, in the present. 1 am now quite 
satisfied, however, that it can be altogether eradicated. In 
my endeavours to exterminate the pest as expeditiously 
and as cheaply as possible 1 have arrived at some con- 
clusions and methods which may be of use to my brother 
planters. 
The following notes refer to flat alluvial land: — 
Timbers containing termitaria of Termes Gestroi. 
The determination of these is of the utmost import- 
ance and rests largely with planters themselves. In 
different localities the trees affected may vary and if 
planters were to publish either in the Agricultural Bulletin 
or in the local papers the names of trees and their localities 
in which the termitaria of T. Gestroi have been found, they 
will be performing a great service to the rubber industry 
in Malaya. So far, in this particular locality, i.e., North 
Bank of the Selangor River, I have found the termitaria 
exclusively in Kumpas and Meranti logs and roots but 
chiefly in Kumpas, this, I think, is due to the fact that 
about two thirds of the planted area, consists of reclaimed 
land in which Kumpas, owing to its great hardness and 
durability, is practically the only timber left to deal with. 
Both Kumpas and Meranti appear to grow in greater 
abundance in land at all inclined to be peaty and this no 
doubt is the reason for the opinion of some planters that 
peaty soils encourage T. Gestroi , as mentioned in Mr. 
Pratt ’s note. 
