THE TERMITES 



If there is food on the table one has to send it away, for all the dishes 

 are full of a struggling broth of termites. In view of the innumerable 

 dangers which threaten the sexual forms on their emergence, it is 

 only by a mass migration that a new community can be founded. 



If at length a pair of termites have escaped the perils of the 

 nuptial flight, they are still by no means in safety. From the limpid 

 air they fall to the ground. From aerial they have become terrestrial 

 creatures, and the first thing they do is to spread out their four 

 wings, and break them off by twisting their abdomens. Male and 

 female are now wingless, and in this form they begin their honey- 

 moon. The female stalks on ahead ; the male follows ; creeping over 

 the irregular surface of the soil, they are beset by a thousand dangers, 

 to which many a pair of lovers fall victims. 



At last our two termites have found a suitable site. They bore 

 their way, according to their species, into the earth, or the bark 

 of a tree, or what not, in order to prepare the nuptial chamber; 

 for the termites do not wed in the air. And even in the nuptial 

 chamber union does not take place at once; there is first a long 

 "engagement," for only gradually do the insects become sexually 

 mature. When the female is at length fertilized the already swollen 

 abdomen gradually attains even more enormous dimensions. But 

 for a long while yet the two have to keep house alone, cleansing the 

 eggs and feeding the larvae ; it is, on an average, a year before the 

 larva has become a worker, so that it is a long time before the off- 

 spring reared are so far advanced that they can take over the labours 

 of the community, and, above all, enlarge their native home. 



If we examine the architecture of the individual species of the 

 Brazilian termites, we shall find very great differences. There are 

 artless termites which merely gnaw passages and shallow chambers 

 under the bark of trees, and others that make similar nests in the 

 soil. In the papier-mache nests built in trees we find structures with 

 a nucleus, the royal cell, around which the others are arranged in 

 strata. The "ant-hills" of the South American terrestrial species are 

 built in storeys ; in the fourth storey a cell is set aside for the royal 

 pair, but there is no special central nucleus. 



I have already spoken of underground nests ; when describing the 

 nests of the Sauva I mentioned a spherical clay termitary. In such 

 nests the chambers are arranged like the steps of a spiral staircase. 

 There are spherical nests which lie on the surface of the soil, and 



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