190 
THE WHITE ANT IN ILLINOIS. 
(Termes flavipes , Kollar.) 
The termites or white ants of Illinois are of interest to the 
economist chiefly by reason of their injuries to buildings and other ; 
wooden constructions of all descriptions, and to collections of books 
in store-rooms or neglected libraries. They are also capable of 
doing considerable harm to a great variety of trees, shrubs, and 
herbaceous plants, but the loss they thus ijoflict is usually slight 
and on the whole scarcely sufficient to require serious attention, i 
Apart from their economic relations they are among the most in¬ 
teresting of our native insects, especially because of their remarka¬ 
ble organization in societies and because of many peculiarities of 
structure, habit, and association connected with their high grade j 
of social development. As among our common ants, which they 
resemble superficially except in color, the descendants of the same : 
parentage are differentiated into several castes or classes; namely, | 
workers and soldiers (both of which are males and females sex- | 
ually undeveloped), and fully developed sexes, capable of flight. 
These white ants present the most remarkable example known i 
to zoologists of enormous and perpetual parasitism, the entire con¬ 
tents of the alimentary canal being in fact little more than a gruel 
of microscopic animal parasites belonging to peculiar species and J 
genera of Protozoa. 
The white ants of Illinois all belong to the single species Termes i 
jiavvpes , which ranges throughout the United States from the I 
Atlantic to the Pacific, increasing in numbers southward to ike I 
Gulf and reaching a height of five thousand to seven thousand feet j 
in the mountains of the West. In this State these ants are most j 
frequently found in woodlands, burrowing in dead and fallen tim¬ 
ber, but commonly having their principal place of abode in the ! 
earth. The lower rails of fences, stumps of trees, half rotten logs, 
and similar objects are frequently mined by them, many thousands 
of all forms living together and traveling back and forth in the 
extensive channels thus excavated. They have been found to in¬ 
fest and damage wooden bridges, dwellings, granaries, outhouses, 
and other buildings; fences, furniture, collections of books and 
papers, and rolls of cloth; roots of living trees, grape-vines, and 
shrubs; cotton plants, sugar-cane; and a variety of garden vegeta¬ 
bles. Exposure to the light is evidently offensive and seemingly 
injurious to them, and they always work under cover, often bur- 
