TERMITES OR WHITE ANTS. 1)71 



Blindness amongst the soldiers and workers is more universal than 

 it is in ants. There seems no reason to doubt that the blindness is 

 connected with the mode of life. The impossibility of attributing the 

 blindness to the inherited effects <^' disuse, seeing that none of the 

 parents in any of the species are blind, utterly discredits such an 

 explanation in the case of other blind animals. 



In all the castes the abdomen varies greatly in size and appearance. 

 according to the nature of the contents. 



The winged imagos have an unconquerable desire to leave the nest 

 and to run the risk of dangers from which not one in many thousands 

 escapes. By this means it is that interbreeding and distribution are 

 effected. Dr. Fritz Miiller aptly compared the winged individuals 

 to perfect flowers, and the neoteinic individuals to cleistogamic 

 flowers. The comparison may be carried a step further. In temper- 

 ate climates the winged forms appear in early summer. In equato- 

 rial regions they appear for the most part in simultaneous swarms at 

 favorable seasons, while in some species they seem to be constantly 

 produced in small numbers the whole year round. The problems of 

 when to swarm and how many imagos to produce seem to be solved 

 in nearly the same ways as the problems of when to flower and how 

 many flowers to produce. 



They fly but feebly, allowing themselves to be carried by th<' wind, 

 and could scarcely cross more than a mile or two of water. 



The wings are soon shed across a transverse basal line. The method 

 of breaking off the wings is to elevate them. This will be found 

 effective in dead insects. The live insect uses its legs and abdomen to 

 elevate its wings, or in other cases pushes them against some object; 

 yet in some cases the live insect will shed all four wings with inexpli- 

 cable rapidity. Their wings not only prevent their burying them- 

 selves and hiding, but on a perfectly level surface are a danger to 

 them, for birds are seen to pick up those with wings in preference to 

 those without. 



At the time of swarming the males and females of the genus Termss 

 pair, the male following the female and often clinging to her abdomen, 

 but there are no copulatory organs, and the sexual organs are not at 

 that stage mature. In Te?'mopsw and Calotermea it seems that the 

 males and females do not run about in pairs. 



In most if not in all species a pair of termite- can found a nest 

 without assistance. Smeathman, however, -fates that in '/'. bellicosus 

 such pairs are protected by any soldiers ana workers who may find 

 them, and are by them treated as kings and queens. 



The females do not differ from the males in head and thorax, 

 though careful measurements may find the male to be the smaller. 

 The abdomen of the females becomes at the last molt different from 

 that of the males on account of a characteristic change in the ventral 



