58 



JOURNAL OF THE 



[April, 



The soldiers are armed with curved mandibles, which they can 

 open at the points fully one-sixteenth of an inch, and when they 

 are closed upon a common ant with a quick blow, they cut the 

 ant in twain. The inner sharp edges of these mandibles are 

 finely serrated. The soldiers and workers of this species are 

 wingless and blind. 



Five of the species from the Isthmus have soldiers with pow- 

 erful mandibles, somewhat similar to those of Termes flavipes. 

 The queens of none of these species have been found upon the 



Fig. 3. — Nest of Entermes in crotch of tree, six feet from the ground, containing four 

 queens. Supplemental nest at base of same tree, with no queen, but abund- 

 ant eggs, workers, uasuti and winged specimens. 



Isthmus at the present writing. One feature of the heads of the 

 soldiers is the strong protecting envelope of chitine over the 

 great developement of muscles to work the mandibles. These 

 species, with one exception, have been collected in the wood 

 they were eating, or taken from their nests and covered galleries. 

 One species builds a conical earth, or mud nest. That from 

 which the specimens were obtained was twenty inches high, and 

 of the same diameter at the surface of the ground. The nest 

 also extended below ground. In searching for the queen-cell 

 the nest was cut down from the top, and excavated for an equal 

 distance below the surface of the ground without reaching the 



