There are several distinct castes in the social organization of the termites; the queen, the males, the soldiers, the workers and the larvæ. The queen is enormous in size as compared with the workers; sometimes three inches long. And exalted to the throne she never moves again, but confines her activities to the laying of eggs, which she deposits at the rate of several thousand a day. But more remarkable than either her size or her ugliness is the fact (stated by Escherich) that she sweats out to the surface of her body a substance which is eagerly devoured by the workers. It is this “exudate” which binds them to her and for which they feed and cherish her. The workers are continually licking her and Escherich declares that he saw one worker tear out a piece of the mother’s hide and eagerly drink the liquid which flowed from the wound. And as her body was scarred in many places it would seem that this was not uncommon. A certain “ant-exterminator” has been used successfully in destroying the white ant. It consists of a charcoal stove on one side of which is a hand-pump and on the other a hose. A powder of eighty-five parts of arsenic and fifteen parts of sulphur is thrown upon the glowing charcoal and by means of the pump and the hose the fumes are forced into the nest. Then the entrance is plugged and the nest is left thus for several days. But perhaps somebody is asking why an insect so wonderful and interesting should be destroyed at all. And that reminds me that I classified the white ant as a pest—and one of the worst pests in Africa. When the white ant devours an object, a dead branch, for instance, it works inside, consumes the whole interior and leaves the thinnest shell of an exterior, an empty shape, which yields at a touch and falls into dust or nothing. And unless one watches very closely, or provides some special protection, it will do this same thing with his house or the furniture in it, or the wooden posts under it. White men’s houses are built upon posts and elevated several feet from the ground. A post beneath the house, though of the hardest wood, and appearing to the eye to be quite sound, may in fact be a hollow cylinder which will collapse at a kick. Iron pillars are now generally used instead of wood, iron being about the only substance which the white ant cannot eat. But one must watch the iron pillars closely for the earthen tunnel leading from the ground to the wooden beams above; for once they get into a house they can never be gotten out. A board in the floor will collapse, or a trunk, of which they have left only a shell. They are very fond of paper; so one must especially watch his library, or some day he will take down his favourite poet only to find that there is nothing of it but cover and the edges of the leaves. I know this very thing to have happened.