TE RMITIDiE. 
119 
from place to place. It is on record that in 1814 Government House, 
Calcutta, was seriously attacked and there seems no reason why any 
building in which wood was used should not be destroyed in time. 
Termite communities are so immense and their industry so great that 
their combined efforts are very effective. In other parts of the 
world, eatable objects are said to disappear in a night; the only paral¬ 
lel case of recent occurrence in India that can be quoted is a prison in 
Bengal, in which the bedding of the prisoners was destroyed in the night 
while the prisoners were sleeping on it. Their efforts are not confined 
to dead vegetables tissue, but they are particularly destructive to 
wheat, to sunflower, groundnut and sugarcane. These little insects 
excrete an acid liquid capable of attacking metal and it has been 
found that where their galleries cross metal, the metal corrodes. 
In reviewing the Termites in Genera Insectorum, Desneux regards 
them as distinct from all families of Neuroptera and as an offshoot of a 
simpler form of Blattidce. According to this view, the family should 
follow the Blattidce , but owing to their degree of specialisation he regards 
them as a separate order under the term Isoptera . This is possibly a 
correct view, and it is undoubtedly misleading, if convenient, to group 
Termites and the other miscellaneous families in Neuroptera; the time 
has as yet hardly come to separate Neuroptera into orders as homogen¬ 
ous and natural as others, and we have preferred to keep them as a 
family, the order Neuroptera being regarded as a convenient group of 
miscellaneous insects whose position is not quite clear, just as the large 
series Polymorpha includes many very diverse families of Coleoptera. 
There are nearly 400 species listed by Desneux, of which 15 are 
recorded from India exclusive of Ceylon. 
The following species are known from India:— 
Termopsis wroughtoni, Desn., is from Kashmir (Jo. Bo. Nat. Hist.. 
Soc., 1904, p. 445, 1906, p. 293). The only known Himalayan termite 
(fig. 48). 
Termes (Leucotermes) indicola , Wasm., from “ India.” 
Termes (Arrhinotermes) Heimi, Wasm., from “ India. 
Termes (Coptotermes) gestroi, Wasm., from Burma, and Malaysia. 
Termes hrunneus , Hagen., from Bengal. 
