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Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1932, Page 11

Whilst there is good ground for discrediting a. recent suggestion that whjte ants, alleged to have been brought in in imported hardwood poles, were responsible for -decay in a telegraph pole at Remuera, it is interesting to note that a metal-eating beetle has been found to exist in Australian Recently the telephones of 200 Cremorne residents of 'Sydney wore thrown out o'f gear, and- it was discovered that this beetle, known as Lyctus Brunneus, previously identified by experts at the Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, had eaten away the lead encasing the underground wires, allowing the entry of water. Under the microscope this insect, which is reported to have made its way into the Commonwealth from foreign countries, is shown to have saw-like teeth. However, a Sydney Museum authority asserts that white ants also eat lead, a sheet of lead on the building roof being eaten away some years ago by ants, which got into the wood.