THE TERMITES 



These old colonies may contain an enormous number of 

 individuals. Thus in a South American species, with a nest 

 measuring about 2 by 1 yards, Emerson found three million 

 individuals. These large numbers can be arrived at by 

 counting samples. Many of the large African nests certainly 

 contain many millions of inhabitants. On the whole the 

 nests of the less specialised termites are much smaller, having 

 only a few thousand termites and flourishing for a much 

 shorter period. 



One interesting exception is the Australian Mastotermes, 

 which as far as structure goes is the most primitive of all 

 termites, but whose colonies may nevertheless contain several 

 million individuals. It was mentioned earlier that the eggs 

 of this termite are glued together like those of a cockroach. 

 The insect too is cockroach-like in a number of details of 

 bodily structure, and this strongly supports the view that 

 it was from an insect of the cockroach-type that the termites 

 were evolved in the remote past. Some of the species of 

 cockroach which live out of doors show a certain resemblance 

 to termites in the care which they devote to their young and 

 in their wood-feeding habits. 



Mastotermes itself seems to be the one surviving relic of a 

 type of termite which was once found all over the world. 

 Fossils closely resembling it have been found in the rocks in 

 a number of places, including the Isle of Wight, which at 

 the time the insects were alive must have had a much warmer 

 climate than it has to-day. 



This account of termite life has been built up from the 

 observations and experiments of a Jarge number of workers 

 in all the continents, mostly during the last sixty years. The 

 whole body of information makes an impressive picture of 

 their strange social organisation. Yet one may well feel that 

 our knowledge of them is still quite rudimentary, that there 



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