206 E. A. ANDREWS 



their snouts against or close to the enemy and ejecting a minute 

 amount of liquid from the tips. This liquid is perfectly clear 

 and colorless and dries on glass to leave a clear residue, as if 

 some clear gum. Tested with congo, tumeric and litmus paper, 

 red, blue and neutral, this secretion gave no color change. When 

 a cover glass was held over excited soldiers this secretion was 

 collected as if by squirting across space. When drops of it 

 were projected by the soldier onto the heads of other soldiers 

 and workers it seemed to produce a sort of paralysis, which in 

 some cases was connected with the adhesion of the antennae 

 to the head. Whenever the antennae of a termite were stuck 

 to the head by water or were cut off the termite remained 

 standing still without initiative and something of the same 

 effect followed the attacks of soldiers. The secretion seemed 

 to act merely mechanically to stick legs, etc., till the foe was 

 pov/erless. 



A very marked factor in the community life is the ability to 

 establish and maintain trails between the food and the nest. 



In the transplanted nests it was found that the workers and 

 soldiers scattered widely at night as individuals and small bands 

 as well as in larger streams and ultimately found food or means 

 of escape, even along wires, etc. 



When a nest was suspended for some days and no termites 

 allowed to escape they poured out in great streams as soon as 

 contact w^as allowed between the nest and the sand heaped 

 up beneath it. Then radiating streams in all directions spread 

 over the sand and established side anastomosing streams till 

 a large network of moving processions explored all the avail- 

 able territory and found avenues for escape into distant parts 

 of the building and the ground. From the first some termites 

 returned along the line against the main current and some picked 

 up and carried both centripe tally and centrtfugally, a few grains 

 of sand. The soldiers almost always were in advance of work- 

 ers in the radiating processions. Many tentative lines were 

 abandoned and a few chief lines maintained. The very loose 

 sand was packed down, or accidentally rolled aside, till a dis- 

 tinct groove marked the road followed by the termites. 



From a nest transplanted to a cocoanut tree the termites 

 spread out over the ground in the night and explored a wide 

 area, but here as in the other case, in the day time the termites 



