NEUROPTERA. 433 
rapidity. They have been known, in one single night, to pierce the 
whole of a table leg from top to bottom, and then the table itself ; 
and then, still continuing to pierce their way, to descend through 
the opposite leg, after having devoured the contents of a trunk 
placed upon the table. On account of the devastations which 
they occasion, Linneeus has called the white ant the greatest plague 
of the Indies. 
There exist in France two species of termites, the Termes 
lucefugus, a little insect of a brilliant black (at least in the male), 
with russety legs, which is common enough in the moors of 
Gascony; and Hie Yellow-necked White ant (Termes Jiuvicolis), 
which lives in the interior of trees and does a ereat deal of mis- 
shief in Spain and in the south of France to olive and other 
precious trees, whilst the first attacks oak and fir trees. 
Latreille established that it is the Termes lucifugus which 
causes such havoe at La Rochelle, at Rochefort, at Saintes, at 
Tournay Charente, in the Isle of Aix, &ec., where many houses 
have been completely undermined by these terrible insects. But 
M. de Quatrefages * has proved that the habits of the termes found 
in towns differ in many essential points from the habits of termes 
in the country. And so it is most probable that the former 
nelong to an exotic species, which must have been unfortunately 
‘mported into France by a merchant vessel. According to 
M. Bobe-Moreau,+ it was only in 1797 that termites were dis- 
zovered for the first time in Rochefort, in a house which had 
stood for a long while uninhabited, and which they had com- 
oletely undermined. In 1804, Latreille relates, as a “hear- 
say,” that the termites had for some years made the inhabitants 
pf Rochefort uneasy, but in 1829, the same author tells a very 
lifferent tale. He speaks with dismay of the ravages committed 
xy this insect in the workshops belonging to the Royal Navy. 
rhe importation of the termes into France is then of recent date. 
A note which was sent to M. de Quatrefages by M. Beltrémieux, 
ixes with still greater accuracy the date of the importation 
ot the termites ; it must have taken place about 1780, a period at 

* * Note sur les Termites (le la Rochelle.” Annales des Sciences Na aturelles, 3e 
érie, tome xx., p.18. 1853. 
t ‘Mémoire sur les Termites observés 4 Rochefort.” Saintes, 1843. 

