OBSERVATIONS ON SOME SOUTH AFRICAN TEKMITES. 333 



III. THE BEHAVIOUR OF WINOED TEEMITES. 



It may be taken as an axiom that every colony of the genus 

 Termes is originally founded by the unaided efforts of a pair 

 of winged insects. There is no acceptable evidence to the 

 contrai'y ; and the oft-quoted presumption that all adult 

 termites are helpless and dependent upon adoption by a section 

 of wandering workers is based upon the merest conjectui'e. 



Again, the aerial flight is often regarded as having for its 

 chief objective the prevention of inbreeding ; that it may fail 

 in this connection is indeed very obvious, although it must be 

 admitted that the possibility of insects from different colonies 

 mating is sometimes present. The real object of the production 

 of sexual individuals in such vast numbers and their annual 

 «xodus seems only to be for the purpose of perpetuating the 

 species ; the countless swarm of emigrants which emerge, most 

 of them to meet Avith speedy death, has its parallel in the 

 phenomenal number of eggs or of young produced by many 

 organisms. 



In the case of two species many individuals have been seen 

 to mate and at once to seek shelter in the earth within 6 to 

 8 ft. of the spot from which they had just emerged. Again, 

 with these two species, and others, it has been noticed on 

 occasion that an aerial flight takes place from one nest and not 

 from others of a like kind adjoining it, and that insects mating 

 far afield were of the same colony. At times, vast numbers of 

 this species or that, or several kinds together, take to the wing 

 simultaneously over a great area of country ; it is on such 

 occasions as these that sexes of different parentage meet. At 

 other times vast numbers emerge in restricted localities only, 

 or from one nest only. 



The flying powers of winged termites do not appear great, 

 and the majority do not fly far. At the same time, even in 

 the case of those displaying the smallest powers of endurance, 

 some few at least far outdistance the majority. Clumsily as 

 they seem to fly many are well able to direct their movements 



