74 Riley Presidential Address. 



sequent stage's of the neuters remain eyeless and the thoracic segments are 

 very little altered, since they develop no wings. But after the second moult 

 a further differentiation takes place between the larvae of the ordinary 

 workers and soldiers, those of the former being recognized by the email 

 head, smaller mandibles, large maxillae and lahiuin, while those of the lat 

 ter have a much larger head, very prominent mandibles, variously modified 

 according to species, and much smaller maxillae and labial parts. In the 

 perfect workers and soldiers these differences are still more strongly marked, 

 and both forms may at once be distinguished from other larvae by the 

 darker color and the shining and harder integuments. 



A peculiar form of neuter^ occurring in Euterrnes, the so-called nasuti, 

 remained a puzzle for a long time. In this form the head is pear-shaped 

 and prolonged anteriorly into a tube or nose which possesses a channel 

 leading backward into the head. The nasuti have the power of secreting a 

 viscid liquid from the tip of this nose. The mandibles are not prolonged 

 and are unfitted for biting, while the lower mouth -parts are but little better 

 developed than in the common soldiers. Dr. Hagen in the Appendix to 

 his famous monograph of theTermes, recognized this form as a soldier form, 

 characteristic of the genus Eutermes, which replnces the large-headed and 

 mandibulate soldiers of the other genera. Mr. Hubbard, however, records 

 having found in one colony of Eutermes nppertii in Jamaica a few of these 

 nasuti among the soldiers (Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1877, pp. 270-2). It is 

 believed, and I think justly, by Fritz M tiller that when found in colonies of 

 other Termites having mandibulate soldiers, these nasuti are mere inquilines 

 or intruders, and the opposite view is justifiable, that when the mandibu 

 late soldier is found among the nasuti, it also Ls an intruder.* 



Acknowledgment. 



Figures 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 and 11, are made from illustrations belonging to 

 the Department of Agriculture, and are used by the kind permission of 

 Chas. R. Dabney, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. 



*Since this address was written, I have had an opportunity of studying Eutermes in 

 the West Indies, E. morio, at St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Monserrat, Dominica, Mar 

 tinique, St. Lucia and Barbados, and both it and E. rippettii in Jamaica. The 

 nasuti are here the smallest individuals in the colony and also somewhat 

 the darkest. They have no power of biting, and no organ of offense, as the liquid 

 exuded from the tip of the nose has no pungent property. They may, therefore, 

 be handled with perfect impunity Of some forty nests examined none have 

 furnished a mandibulate soldier. The nasuti, though having no weapon of offense (so 

 far at least as man is concerned) are nevertheless active guards, and undoubtedly take 

 the place of the soldiers in Termes proper. They crowd around the queen, when the 

 colony is disturbed, and rush to the outside and about the borders of any breakage or 

 hole made in the nest or the tunnels thereto. They thiow up the head and play the 

 antennee and palpi in a comically threatening way, considering their inoffensiveness, 

 and they watch around the borders on the inside of such breakage while the workers 

 run up rapidly now and again to deposit the soft excrement which is to mend the gap, 

 and of which the tunnels and nests are for the most part formed. Kggs and young 

 larvze are frequently borne on the nose and on the feelers of these nasuti; but I have not 

 yet satisfied myself that they are thus purposely carried, and are not accidentally stuck 

 by the exuding liquid, the latter view comporting best with most of the cases. But 

 that these nasuti perform some function in the economy of the colony other than that 

 of soldiery defence, is rendered almost certain by their relatively large numbers com 

 pared with the real soldiers in Termes, for they are generally as numerous as the man 

 dibulate workers and sometimes as numerous as all the other individuals together. 

 While the liquid from the nose may be used in cementing the walls of the tunnels, I am 

 inclined to believe that it is of more importance in furnishing the first pabulum of the 

 young. 



Eutermes rippertii differs little from E. morio in habit except that the hard, paler 

 nodules generally found in its older nests do not occur in those of the latter. But the 

 most interesting experience, which is born out by the observations of Mr Dudley on the 

 species in Panama, is that I have found as many as nine queens in one nest and often 

 three or four. In fact there is every variation, even in independent nests which appar 

 ently have no accessory mother-nest, from those without queen to those with one up to 

 nine (or more according to Dudley), while in one nest I found scores of true royal pairs 

 in which the queens had undergone no material enlargement. I have also found either 

 no male or sometimes two and once three males associated with a single queen. 

 Ordinarily, however, there is but a pair, i. e., one queen and her escort. 



