96 Claude Fuller 



In the sub-joined descriptions, except as regards M. havilandi 

 s.str. only indisputable associations of soldiers and workers with 

 their corresponding imagos have been taken into account and 

 whenever there has been the slightest doubt as to the relationship 

 of workers or soldiers taken at the same time and place 

 with the imagos such have been excluded, pending an 

 opportunity of ascertaining the exact association. Speaking 

 generally, species in this genus are more readily recognised by 

 imago than soldier characters and the characters of soldiers are 

 subordinate to those of imagos. Hitherto the records of Micro- 

 termes in South Africa have all been in relation to Hagen's species 

 incerius. This follows the determination and description of the 

 commonest kind by Haviland (1898) and Sjostedt (1900) as 

 Termes incertus Hagen. Holmgren (1913) has, however, made 

 it perfectly clear that the South African insect cannot be incertus 

 and that the original determination by Haviland was purely con- 

 jectural. Hagen's species is, up to the present, only known by a 

 queen found by Pieters in a mound of Macrotermes bellicosui 

 (Sm.) at Tete and the size of the head and pronotum of the 

 type, as recorded by Holmgren, shows that the Zambesi insect 

 has far smaller dimensions than any yet found in S. Africa. 

 For these reasons the Natal insect has been renamed M. havilandi 

 by Holmgren (1913). 



With regard to the description of this insect, I have not the 

 slightest hesitation in saying that, so far as the imago is concerned, 

 Haviland dealt with imperfectly coloured insects. That is, material 

 collected from nests and in that blanched condition which obtains 

 after the adult stage is reached and before the sclerites are 

 fully chitinized. That this was so is also reflected in the description 

 by Sjostedt (1900) from the types and by most of the specimens 

 in the Haviland collection now in the Natal Museum. As 

 regards the latter, I find them accompanied by nymphs and un- 

 coloured imagos that had but recently completed the final ecdysis 

 when collected. For this and other reasons a revised description 

 of the species is essential to its recognition and this is now sub- 

 mitted; that part relating to the imago being based upon quite 

 mature specimens from Weenen county, where most of Haviland's 



