90 THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE CHAP. 



tise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives." To 

 this mode of life is also due ' ' the immense development 

 of individual initiative." Ants are not well protected, 

 but ' their force is in mutual support and mutual con- 

 fidence." " And if the ant stands at the very top of the 

 whole class of Insects for its intellectual capacities ; if 

 its courage is only equalled by the most courageous 

 Vertebrates, and if its brain to use Darwin's words- 

 ' is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the 

 world, perhaps more so than the brain of man,' is it not 

 due to the fact that mutual aid has entirely taken the 

 place of mutual struggle in the communities of ants ? : 

 7. Termites.- -The true ants are so supremely interest- 

 ing, that the Termites or " white ants ' (which are not 

 ants at all) are apt to receive scant justice. Perhaps 

 inferior in intelligence, they have the precedence of 

 greater antiquity and all the interest which attaches to 

 an old-established society. Nor is their importance less 

 either to practical men or to speculative biologists. In 

 1781 Smeathman gave some account of their economy, 

 noting that there were in every species three castes, 

 ' first, the working insects, which, for brevity, I shall 

 generally call labourers ; next, the fighting ones or 

 soldiers, which do no kind of labour ; and, last of all, 

 the winged ones, or perfect insects, which are male and 

 female, and capable of propagation." 



The wingless and often blind " workers," smallest 

 in the ant-hill, do all the work of foraging and mining, 

 attending the royal pair and nursing the young. The 

 soldiers, which are also wingless, are much larger than 

 the workers, but there are relatively only a few in each 

 hill. " They stand," Prof. Drummond says, " or pro- 

 menade about as sentries, at the mouths of the tunnels. 

 When danger threatens, in the shape of true ants, the 

 soldier termite advances to the fight." " With a few 

 sweeps of its scythe-like jaws it clears the ground, and 

 while the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the 

 builders, unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their 

 work." At home, in the ant-hill, shut up in a chamber 

 whose door admits workers but is much too small for the 



