84 
can be made to serve. Hence from one mature colony, inside or 
just outside a clearing, a considerable percentage of the logs and 
stumps may be infected. Allow one or two years of undisturbed 
development, and you have numbers of colonies at great strength, 
ready to attack rubber or any other suitable material, or to spread 
the infection by swarms of flying individuals to uninfected areas or 
logs. Trenching, digging, poisoning, fumigating, tracing runways, 
and numerous modifications and combinations of these had been tried 
and found incapable of eradicating the pest. Deep changkolling 
over attacked areas had been abandoned — if it was ever tried — 
probably because of the cost. In some places the surface timber 
was being hunted through for nests, the logs cut open and the 
queen sought and killed. As it had been frequently stated that 
Termes gestroi had not the power possessed by a lot of species of 
elevating baby commoners to the position of temporary queen, this 
looked likely at least to stop.any further development of those nests. 
But this method had soon 'to be discarded also, as 1 found, in the 
remnants of such colonies, substitution queens raised either from 
undestroyed eggs or very young individuals. It was, therefore, 
obvious that the whole nest must be destroyed so that no remnant 
capable of raising substitution queens was left ; and not only the nest, 
but the containing timber, lest later some members of a nuptial 
swarm should find it a suitable place in which to settle and 
recommence the trouble. But if in the remains of the nest log, why 
not in other timber also. So long as suitable timber is left, even if 
all the Termes gestroi in the clearing have been destroyed, the 
conditpus approximate to those of an uninfected new clearing, and 
in one night a nuptial swarm may reinfect the whole area. 
I was thus driven to the conclusion that the only safe preventive 
and remedial treatment for Termes gestroi was absolute clean 
clearing. 
During 1915 I was able to test the method on a peaty block 
suffering from the heaviest pure Termes gestroi attack I have seen. 
Surface timber was destroyed, stumps w r ere blasted and lifted, and 
buried log’s were prospected for with probes, dug out, and burned. 
The work was done thoroughly, and the result was excellent. One 
or two small areas showed re-attacks which were traced to hidden 
logs, but after these were taken out, no further white ant trouble 
arose in the block although previously the mortality ranged^ up to 75 
per cent, of the 18 months old rubber. The method, then, was 
sound, but what of the expense P Would it really pay the average 
estate to put up the necessary money P I had faith that it would, 
considering the crop saved, and the reduction in working costs 
effected, so thereafter, whenever called upon to advise on white ant 
treatment, I insisted upon the fundamental importance of destroying- 
timber. Some estates provided for the work — others carried on with 
careful application of their previous methods. But during 1914-15 
