Eventually, you will be taken to the Telmatological Research Institute
.org site. The major part of this forthcoming website is the
Encyclopaedia Isoptera. This 244 page book, a winner at the 2000 Shell
Fremantle Print Award, contains fascinating factual information about
termites. Read about the Queen in the biscuit tin, Items of Note Eaten
by Termites* and the Soul of the white ant.
*Aeroplanes in sheds, Aerodromes, air conditioner units, aluminium,
ammunition boxes, Ancient Temples in Asia, animal fodder, apple trees,
archaeological remains, asbestos, asparagus, asphalt, asters, avocados,
aubergines, Australian Museum (in 1896), balls (composition billiards,
football, croquet, golf, tennis), balsa wood, bamboo poles, banana,
bandages, new banknotes inside strongboxes of the local bank of Diego
Suarez, banyan tree, barges, bark, barley, barrels, baskets (of roots),
bats (baseball and cricket bats), wet batteries containing sulfuric
acid, beans, plant benches, bearers, ber (Zizyphus mauritiana), Bibles
(covers and text) and other books (including books left on a counter
overnight, Latin Grammar and Voyage of Sir Francis Drake), bitumen,
wooden barrels of bitumen, blankets, blocks (toy), blueprints, bobbins,
bonds, bones (eroded), boots, bougainvillea, bowls, boxes (box of
candles on second story of a house, cardboard, carton, chalkboard
boxes, boxes stored on concrete floors, grape boxes, wooden boxes
containing currants from Greece, softwood, wood), bridges, brinjal,
buildings, bungalows, cabbage, cables (underground — electrical,
railway, telephone or telegraph), electric cables controlling the locks
of the Panama Canal, cacao, cacti, wooden camera, camphor, canoes,
dugout canoes, canvas, carpets, carrots, packing cases (containing mica
and scotch whiskey), cassava, castor, cauliflower, cave paintings,
ceiling boards, cement, certificates from school and employment,
charcoal, chests, chicken shelters, chiku (Sapota acharis), chilies,
chrysanthemum, church, church organ, discarded cigarette box, citrus
fruit, clocks, cloth and clothing (cotton, linen, jute, silk, rayon),
clove, coat, coat hangers, cocoa, coconuts, coffins (including
elaborate Chinese coffins in Fukien), coins (eroded when buried for
safe keeping in China), commercial fruit-bearing trees (orchard trees,
loquat, mulberry, passion fruit, grapevine, jack, cashew, lichee),
composition board, compositors desk at a printing works, conduits
(including wooden conduit in municipal heating system, Hamburg),
contents of a chest, cord, cork (cork from wine bottles, corks sealed
with lead) and cork insulation board, cotton plants, cotton bales,
cotton seed bales, cross-sticks from the game Pit’s Mouth, organic
cushioning material, dahlias, dam liners (plastic), date palms, deal
board suspended above the ground between iron droppers, documents,
doors, boarded doors, door jambs, drawing boards, dredges, drums
(musical), wooden cable, wire and rope drums, floating dry-docks, the
dung of herbivores (dry cow, horse, elephant), ebonite, electrical
equipment, bases of electrical light fittings, hardwood electric light
poles, electrotype blocks, fabric, fence posts, ferry boat plying on
the Tweed River, fibreboard, file baskets, file boxes, or file cases,
official files, school-children’s pictures of film and football stars,
fig trees, flooring boards, floors, flour, flowers, foam rubber, plant
fruits, fruit piled on the ground, furniture (antique chest, beds,
bedsteads, book-cases, bureaus, chairs, chests, cupboards, deck chairs,
desks, iceboxes, office tables, sewing machine cabinet, softwood
tables, stools, tables, tabletops, X-ray cabinets, washstands, etc.),
furs, ganja (Cannabis sativa), geraniums, glass (eroded), goat
enclosures, gourds (used as bubble pipes, beer cups, scoops, and as
vessels for water, beer and rum), grains, gram, wooden gramophone,
granaries, grasses, greenhouse of a palace near Vienna in the 19th
century, grave poles, groundnuts, groundpea (Voandzeia subterranea),
guava, guns (wood eaten and metal corroded in the Philippines, gun
butts in Africa), haft of pick, handkerchiefs, handles (brush,
carpenters tools, hammer, spades, of axes, adzes, hoes), hay, hides,
horn, hose (cotton-jacketed rubber fire hose), human excrement, hunting
bows, ice, insulation (sawdust in ice houses full of ice, rubber and
tar cloth on wires and cables, and insulation or wallboard of wood pulp
or fibre), insulator pegs, telephone insulator spindle, ivory
elephant tusks (in storage in Africa, marred by grooving), joists,
Australian hardwood floor joists, junks, jute plants, khaki tunic,
knives, labels, granary and chicken ladders, lawns, lead, lead sheathed
cables, wooden box inside a lead covered subterranean power cable,
leather, leather boots, leaves, lemon trees, lichens, Lignum vitae from
San Domingo, lime, lime mortar (between bricks in the foundations of
buildings), linoleum, linotype blocks, logs (imported, of cattle
kraals), Longwood (Napoleon’s residence on Saint St Helena), lumber (in
piles), macadamia, maize, mango, manuscripts, matting, mattress,
melons, metals (etched), some metal foils, microscope slides, millet
plants, bulrush millet, Japanese Mint (Mentha arvensis), mohwa, paper
money, mortar and pestles, mud huts, mulberry, mushrooms, mummies (in
graves in Egypt), National Registration cards (proof of Zambian
citizenship), native curio labelled as from ‘New Guinea,’ neem,
newspapers, nuts, oak, oat, wooden oil derricks, oil palms, oil soaked
soil and wood, old buildings, olives, motor omnibus, oranges, organs,
paddy, village palisades, palms, palm matting, pamphlets, paper
(writing and insulation, bundles of printing paper, quantity of paper
stored in a damp cupboard, ancient manuscripts of Egyptian Antiquity,
newspaper used as wrapping paper, writing-paper, paper prints on tins,
and travelling trunks), parquetry floors, particle board, pasteboard,
pawpaw, pecan, pepper trees, pigeon pea, pear trees, pews (in
churches), phonographs and records, photographs, pianos, pictures and
frames, picture rails, piers (house and harbour), pigeon coop, pigsty,
pineapple, plans (of vessels in navy yards), plants (alkaloid (tea)
latex (rubber), resinous (pine) shade and ornamental, woody), wall
plaster, plastic water pipes and sanitary fittings, plastic/synthetic
fibres (plasticised polyvinyl chloride, low density polythene,
polystyrene, polyurethane foams, cellulose esters — but not nylon)
plywood, Poinciana, poles, poles of dwelling houses and men’s shelters,
and those used as frames for reed mats enclosing homesteads, mooring
posts and piles in Port Jackson and Venice, porridge stirrers,
pomegranate, poppy, postbags previously held for some time in Mexico,
postcards, potatoes (Irish and sweet), powder (both black and
smokeless, stored in boxes), prints, props (mine), pulses, pumpkins,
radios, railway cars (freight and passenger, in Hawaii and India),
railway stations, rattles, razor blades corroded in Hawaii, redwood,
things made of reed and grass, relics in museums, religious shrines,
ribbon belting, rice, riverbanks, reservoir and dam walls, rollers
(shade), the roofing of native dwellings, roots, ropes (coir, jute,
moonj grass, sunn hemp), rose, rubber, rubber trees, rubbish tips,
rugs, flour sacks, jute sacking, old sacks, saddlery and other leather
goods, saguaro cactus, bagged salt, sansa, seeds, seemal, wooden
sewerage pipes, sewing machines, shafts of spears and arrows, shell,
shotgun shells, shelves, wooden ships, shoes (including half a dozen
pairs of shoes, old shoes), sisal, wooden skiffs, skulls (eroded in
graves), sleepers (railway and tramway), soil around plants sent to the
Arnold Arboretum in Forest Hills, Massachusetts, sorghum, soursap, soya
bean, spoons, stamps (postage and revenue), staves, staves of water
tanks, stems, steps of a building, sticks (label), straw from unbaked
bricks, stumps, sugar, sugar beet, sugarcane, suitcase, summer house,
sunflowers, sunn-hemp, Swedish matchbox, tablecloths, tamarind, tape
(paper and tennis court cloth), tar and tar paper (used in
waterproofing), taro, tea, teak, teff, tents (fabric and wooden and
bamboo pegs), textiles, thatched grass roofs of houses, ties (railway),
tile (artificial composition), timber, tin cans (in Singapore,
containing kerosene oil, eroded so that oil leaked out), tomatoes,
tortoise droppings, wooden towers, the town of Sri Hardgobindpur, toy
(rag dog in Panama), traps of all kinds (termites also release the
triggers), trunks, plant tubs, wooden plant tubs sent to the Royal
Palace at Schoenbrunn near Vienna, twine, typewriters, underwear, UNIP
membership cards (Zambia), vegetable fibres, vegetation (in various
stages of decomposition, humification, or mineralisation), a selection
of the churches, palaces, libraries and wooden bridges of Venice,
verandahs, whole villages in Lower Egypt (later abandoned), vines,
vineyards, violin case and violin, wall studs, wallboard, wallpaper,
walls, rubber washers in fruit jars, water tanks, wharves, wheat crops,
bagged wheat stored on earthen floor, willows, window frames, window
shutters, plant wood (spring wood, autumn wood, dead dying or still
living), wood attached to ornamental orchids, wooden items brought to
South America by slaves from Africa (hypothesized), woodwork of a
motorcar, wool, works of art, xylophones, yams, yarn and yeast cakes
(in Texas).