In the United States alone, termites do about $40,000,000 worth of damage a year! Strangely enough, these creatures which are such a problem to man today, have existed for millions of years. Primitive termites probably lived during the age of dinosaurs!

Today, they are found in every state in the United States and in southern Canada. The greatest number are to be found in the rainy tropical regions around the world. There are more than 2,000 kinds of termites, about 50 of which are found in the United States.

Termites are insects that look like ants, but which are quite different from them. They have thick waists, a light color, and evenly curved feelers, or antennae.

Termites live in colonies in wood. They cut out the wood and form rooms for the colony. A colony of termites will consist of a king and queen soldiers, and workers. The soldiers protect the colony from its enemies. They do not have wings and are blind, but they are the fighters.

The job of the workers is to feed the colony. They eat the wood and then feed this digested wood to all the other termites. In the hind intestine of a worker is a liquid. When this liquid is looked at through a microscope thousands of single-celled animals, or protozoans, are seen. The protozoans turn the cellulose of the wood into sugar. The sugar is digested by the worker and fed to the others.

Wood can be so treated that termites will not attack it. One method is to soak it with coal tar creosote under pressure, so that the creosote reaches the center. When building a house, care should be taken not to let untreated wood be closer than 60 centimeters from the ground. Although moist soil is necessary for the life of most termites, there are dry-wood termites in the South that can live without such soil.