DEVELOPMENT OF THl-^ ANTE N Nil-] OF TERMITES. 259 



this, some — the soldiers — by extended treatment become highly 

 specialised. 



If the second view is to hold good it follows that with 

 those species exhibiting four well-defined infertile castes 

 there is a very accurate determination of the food-supply 

 to produce majors and minors accompanied by peculiar 

 diiferential feeding, amounting to doctoring, to produce 

 soldiers from some of these. 



I find it quite impossible to regard the infertile members 

 of such a community as dependent upon a post-natal treat- 

 ment, since they could only result from an incomprehensible 

 and complex treatment practised upon a multitude of indi- 

 viduals daily augmenting an already populous community. 



The fungus-growing Termes natalensis has four sharply 

 defined infertile castes. The workers carry the eggs from 

 the queen cell and stack them in the fungus garden. Here 

 they hatch, and with them are to be found, inextricably 

 mixed, thousands of: developing forms representative of all 

 castes and stages, and only accompanied by about one adult 

 worker to the thousand. Apparently undifferentiated at 

 birth, the young are surrounded by a particular kind of food, 

 and their mouthparts are sufficiently well-developed to tear 

 off portions of the delicate tissue composing the well-known 

 white spheres. If it be argued that they do not subsist upon 

 this substance the following questions present themselves : 



(1) Why are they, as eggs, brought to such places as those- 

 where the spheres are most abundant ? 



(2) Why cannot one see and record overwhelming evidence 

 of the young being fed by the workers ? 



(3) Why are the immature forms present in the fungus 

 garden in all stages of development, whatever their ultimate- 

 form ? 



As it can be readily demonstrated that the immature forms 

 feed regularly upon the cells which compose the white- 

 spheres, how can their different traits be attributed to the 

 withholding or giving of food when the opportunity for all' 

 must be alike ? 



