64 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO FORESTS. 
It is believed that the spread or distribution of a colony may be 
largely dependent on the supply of decaying wood near by; that is, 
if there is a large amount near by (as colonies in large dead trees) the 
colony will not branch out over a large area. 
On August 5, 1914, at Falls Church, a true royal pair of flavipes 
was found in a cell in the more solid wood of a decaying oak chopping 
block, that is, a section of a log that had been put to this use in the 
woods. The cell was in a knotty area of solid wood about 14 feet 
from the ground but in the outer layers. The king was hiding 
beneath the queen, and is 6 millimeters in length. The abdomen is 
distended and the antennz mutilated. The queen was of large size 
(probably 10 to 12 millimeters in length) but was crushed in cutting 
into the royal cell. The colony was large, and galleries extended from 
the ground up through this block and another similar block placed on 
top of it. The termites had filled in the crevices between the two 
blocks with clay, and larve, pup, and adults of Homovalgus squa- 
miger Beauvois, a scarabeid beetle, were present in the termite 
galleries in the clay or in pupal cells. 
In the same woods several young royal pairs of flavipes were found 
established in incipient colonies in the outer layers of a decaying 
chestnut slab partially sunken in the ground. Each pair was in a 
shallow cell excavated in the wood and was surrounded by a few 
young larvee (a half dozen to a dozen). A few unhatched eggs were 
present in some of the cells. In one of the cells three adults were 
present instead of simply one pair. This is quite often the case in 
incipient colonies. 
At Veitch, Va., on August 12, eight neoteinic reproductive forms 
of flavipes were found in a decaying yellow pine stump. They were 
in the more solid wood about 1 foot from the ground, but in the 
outer layers. Five were females and three were males or kings. 
The females were all about 7 millimeters in length, with abdomens 
distended with eggs, but with the segments not markedly separated 
except near the end of the abdomen, where the latter was lumpy and 
distorted, due to distension. The males, with narrow, slender abdo- 
mens, were all about 64 millimeters in length, but had, instead of the 
straw-colored pigmentation of the females, a darker pigmentation 
streaked with grayish-black markings on the head and borders of 
the tergites and sternites and between the coxe and the mesothoracic 
and metathoracic tergites. The antenne -of these reproductive 
forms consisted of 16 to 17 segments. These forms were developed 
from nymphs of the second form. The colony was not very large, 
but numerous unhatched eggs and young larvze were present. 
At Lake Toxaway, N. C., on August 27, 1914, an ergatoid queen 
of Leucotermes virginicus was found under a large flat rock in a shallow 
cell in the earth. Workers, soldiers, and young were aggregated 
