514 AUSTRALIAN TERMITID.E, 



In the genus Eutermes the soldiers (nasuti) have a nose-like 

 process of the head which is hollow, and connected with a large 

 retort-shaped vesicle occupying the upper portion of the head. 

 From it is discharged a thick honey-like fluid, forming a globule 

 at the tip of the snout; and this is used as a means of defence.* 



This protective fluid is also made use of among some of the 

 two-jawed soldiers, and when this is the case the opening is above 

 the base of the clypeus, and the ejected fluid is thick and milky. 



The abdomen of the soldiers is more slender than that of the 

 workers. Their duties are to protect the workers from any 

 enemies when the walls of the galleries are broken into, and also 

 to direct them at their work. 



These are the first three primary forms found in the nest, but 

 there is a great number of secondary ones. First in importance 

 among these is the queen, produced from a winged female fertilised 

 by a male (both of whose wings have either dropped or been 

 pulled off, and who after their flight with the other winged forms) 

 from the parent nest, have been taken care of by some workers 

 who have probably in the first instance found them under a log. 

 After fertilization the body swells out into an immense, white, 

 elongate, cylindrical sac the original chitinous plates of the seg- 

 ments forming black bars across the intersegmental membrane of 

 the abdomen, now consisting of a mass of egg tubes rendering the 

 queen incapable of acti^■e locomotion. 



Next come the complementary queens, another form of the 

 female termite which seems to have reached a secondary stage, 

 with an enlarged corrugated abdomen, and though not ordinarily 

 egg-producing they are capable of becoming so if required, and 

 appear to be " kept in stock," so to speak, to replace the true 

 queen should she be killed or become incapable, so that egg- 

 production may not be checked. Unlike the queen they ai-e 

 produced direct from the female larvse, and have no sign of 



• H. Mc E. Knower, "Origin of the Nasutus (Soldier) of Enfermen." 

 Johns Hopkins University Circulars. Vol. xiii. No. iii. p. 5S, 1894^. 



