226 E. A. ANDREWS 



activities might contribute to better understanding of factors 

 underlying communal life. 



2. These termites spend their energy chiefly in eating wood, 

 at a distance from the home nest, and in running at about the 

 rate of 15 mm. per second from nest to food and back, con- 

 cealed in arcades. 



3. The arcades are built by them from bits of wood cemented 

 with anal discharges. 



4. Each worker does as any other without any aid, as far 

 as seen, and does but little at one time or place. 



5. The nest may be thought of as aggregates of arcades, 

 connected to form a spongeworkof chambers some 7 mm. wide and 

 rarely 30 mm. long without abrupt turns and intercom-munications. 



6. The material in both cases is primarily wood and secreted 

 cement, but differs in the amount of comminution. 



7. In each nest there is one specialized chamber some 7 

 mm. high and 30 or 40 mm. wide in which the queens or laying 

 female or females are found. 



8. The respiratory needs of the termites would seem slight, 

 since the estimated amount of air in a nest weighing 40 pounds 

 and occupying nearly 4 cubic feet of space was only 9 volumes 

 for each volume of termite. 



9. The " fungus gardens " often present in the nests appeared 

 at this summer season as dry masses, used directly as stored-up 

 food and not as substrata for fungus growths. They are, micro- 

 scopically, finely comminuted fragments of cell walls of plants 

 bound together with some secretion. They may, in this state, 

 represent the primitive form from which culture gardens have 

 arisen under other climatic conditions. 



10. The nest is occupied by: many young and eggs; generally 

 I but sometimes as many as 4 perfect females ; i or 2 males 

 (as far as seen) ; often many winged forms ; and some hundreds 

 of thousands of workers; and one-ninth as many soldiers, which 

 are nasuti. 



11. The workers do all the mechanical work: bite off and 

 transport the wood; feed the soldiers, and males and females; 

 clean the males, females and soldiers; remove the eggs from the 

 orifice on the end of the female and clean and transport them; 

 do all the work of arcade and nest building and all the biting 

 in defense of the community. 



