Social Insects. 31 



which take the same tender care of them that they do of their 

 own young, feeding them and keeping them clean, and in every 

 way showing the utmost friendship. 



TERMITES OR WHITE ANTS. 



The Termites or White Ants have developed, in their higher 

 forms, an organization and a differentation of individuals very 

 similar to those of the true ants; whence the popular name. 

 They are among the oldest insects, as their remains are found in 

 the coal measures of Europe, whereas the true ants do not appear 

 until the Tertiary. Belonging, in fact, to an order which has 

 been very generally looked upon as the lowest or least developed 

 among the Hexapods and as representing most nearly the earlier 

 or primitive insects which appeared 'upon the globe, the fact that 

 they have acquired a social organization which in so many re 

 spects recalls that of the ants, is of great significance, as we shall 

 see when we come to consider the origin and development of these 

 traits. Yet a more intimate acquaintance with the facts concern 

 ing the Termites shows us that the development of the social 

 habit and the differentation of forms, have been along different 

 lines from those presented by the social Hymenoptera, and are 

 based upon a different mode of development. In other words, 

 the Termites, belonging to an order which undergoes incomplete 

 metamorphoses the larva being born in the image of the adult, 

 minus wings is more or less capable of self-support soon after 

 birth, while in the social Hymenoptera, which undergo a complete 

 metamorphosis, the larva is quite unlike the adult, and entirely 

 helpless during development. 



It is only within recent years that the Termites have been care 

 fully studied. The results of these later studies must be rele 

 gated to a note. (Note 6). While with most species the colony con 

 sists of a king and a queen and of two forms of neuters or workers; 

 yet in the European Tcrmes lucifugus as many as fifteen distinct 

 forms have been characterized, but no true queen discovered. In 

 other words, besides the four distinctive classes of individuals 

 which characterize the more highly developed species, we find, 

 sometimes in the same species, but particularly when the different 

 species are considered, every gradation between these different 

 classes. 



The fundamental difference between the social Hymenoptera 



