MASONS 87 



are not more closely related to ants than a bee is 

 to a butterfly. The popular name, no doubt, was 

 suggested because of some similarity in their social 

 habits and marvellous organization, their permanent 

 communities, and their care of the young. Their 

 forms are quite unlike, and whereas the ant is 

 encased in a hard and polished chitinous exterior, 

 the termite is soft-bodied and pale, its integument 

 apparently painfully sensitive to the action of 

 light, judging from the care it takes to live and 

 work always in darkness. It is to this latter sensi- 

 tiveness that its supremacy as a mason and builder 

 is, in all probability, due. 



In one respect they do resemble ants — and hive 

 bees — that is, in addition to males and females, 

 there is a far more numerous sexless class upon 

 whom devolves all the activities of the community, 

 save only that of reproduction. But there is this 

 difference between the sexless forms of termites 

 and those of most ants, that in the former there is 

 a further division into workers and soldiers. This 

 is not any arbitrary assignment of duties by the 

 community, it is a distinction enforced by nature, 

 for both worker and soldier are — like poets — born 

 as such, not made. 



Both soldiers and workers are blind, but in spite 

 of this fact they are very sensitive to light. The 

 workers are well named, for upon them devolves 

 all the labours of the community — the erection, 

 repair, and extension of the termitarium or hill, the 

 care of the eggs and young, the prison care of the 



