212 E. A. ANDREWS 



These observations might be interpreted as supporting the 

 view that the termites run after the others along the trail from 

 some chemical stimulus due to material left by the others and 

 that the termites also have some sense of the direction in which 

 they are running and an ability to continue on in that line even 

 after detours. 



A rather ludicrous result of the former factor, or at least, a 

 peculiar exhibition of the running of termites one after the other 

 was several times seen when many workers and soldiers were 

 kept for days in a finger bowl with moist filterpaper on the 

 bottom. They then sometimes after random running about, 

 ran continuously for a half hour or more in a circle around the 

 bottom of the bowl. Each followed behind those before and 

 so on indefinitely in a circle about 9 inches in length, complet- 

 ing I lap every 15 seconds. Another lot, mostly soldiers, though 

 kept several days in a dish with a large prickly pear " leaf " 

 and thus familiar with the surroundings and lack of escape, took 

 to running about the elliptical top surface of the leaf in an 

 interrupted ellipse. Some stopped and stood aside while a few 

 ran counter to the rest. After this closed circuit has been main- 

 tained some hours the leaf was hung up vertically in the sun 

 to be photographed, but the running ceased, to be renewed, 

 though in the opposite direction, when the leaf was restored 

 to the dish. Finally most all went gradually down under the 

 leaf though for some hours others kept on running irregularly 

 and crossed various parts of the leaf. 



Though much of the activity of the termite is influenced by 

 stimuli from the- immediate neighborhood, by chemical sub- 

 stances apparently, which may produce something akin to a 

 sense of smell, or at all events cause the termite to act as if it 

 had a sense of smell, there are disturbances starting far from 

 the termite and affecting it while affecting us as sound and 

 light. 



In a community suspended from the ceiling by a copper wire 

 --and represented by many thousands on a moist block of artifi- 

 ■ cial stone which they got to from the nest by means of a long 

 ■stick as a bridge it was first observed by Mr. Middleton that 

 •:the noise of thunder and of blasting rocks was followed by a 

 (quick and very remarkable departure of most all the termites 

 toward the nest. The blocks of stone w^eighed some 16 pounds 



