294 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



* in making fresh observations upon bees, the more 

 firm is my conviction, that the time is not yet arrived 

 in which we can draw satisfactory conclusions respect- 

 ing their pohcy. It is only by varying and combining 

 experiments in a thousand ways, and by placing these 

 industrious flies in circumstances more or less remov- 

 ed from their ordinary state, that we can hope to as- 

 certain the right direction of their instinct, and the 

 true principles of their government.''* What we have 

 to state, therefore, concerning these interesting com- 

 munities, must be considered only an approximation to 

 the truth as near as we can bring it from the facts al- 

 ready ascertained. 



GOVERNMENT OF WHITE ANTS, OR TERMITES. 



The government of the extraordinary insect col- 

 onies belonging to the genus Termes does not 

 appear to be quite so well understood as their 

 labours in architecture and their destructive pro- 

 pensities; for though the different orders are suffi- 

 ciently distinct, their analogies to bees and ants have 

 not yet been clearly ascertained. From what has 

 been observed by Smeathman,t it appears there are 

 four different descriptions of these insects in each 

 community; and Latreille has discovered a fifth, 

 whence we have workers, nymphs, soldiers, males, and 

 females. 



The worhers or labourers are not in their perfect 

 state, like the workers among the common ants, but 

 are only grubs [larvce) as hatched from the egg. 

 When full-grown they are about a quarter of an inch 

 long, and they constitute the most numerous part of 

 the population, there being at least a hundred 

 workers to one of the soldiers, from which they 

 differ in having round heads and short mandibles. 

 They are the most active members of the community, 



* CEuvres. x, 194. t' Phil. Trans, vol, Ixxi. 



