NEUROPTERA, — TERMITIDA. 15 
form covered ways, guard the males and females, and take care of the 
eggs and young: and, 5. Pupe, first observed by Latreille, and de- 
scribed by him as resembling the workers, but having four white tu- 
bercles on the back of the meso- and meta-thorax, in the shape of 
rudimental wings. Ina small African species from Fernando Po, of 
which the nest is in the museum of the Rev. F. W. Hope, the pupe 
(fig. 58.13.) are furnished with 4-wing tubercles extending beyond 
the body, with large lateral eyes. These individuals bear a great re- 
semblance to some of the perfect Cercopide ; no other figures have 
hitherto been given of these insects in this state. Latreille found 
these pupz in the nests of T. lucifugus in the spring; and in the 
month of June following, the winged individuals make their ap- 
pearance in prodigious numbers, swarming during the evening and 
night ; the latter shortly afterwards pair, and after impregnation, the 
females (as in the ants, with which these insects possess a very great 
analogy), lose their wings, which easily fall off * ; they are then made 
prisoners by the workers, in order to become the founders of fresh 
colonies, and conducted into the interior of the nest, where the body 
of the female becomes swollen to an enormous size, exceeding by 
20,000 or 30,000 times the bulk of one of the workers, when she com- 
mences laying her eggs; the amazing number of 80,000 being dis- 
charged in the course of twenty-four hours. From these circumstances, 
Latreille (Hist. Nat. Ins. vol. xiii. p. 65.) was led to believe that. the 
fourth kind cf individuals, or the workers of Smeathman, are larve ; 
that the fifth kind are pupz; that the soldiers are a peculiar order 
which never acquire wings, and are not capable of reproduction, being 
thus analogous to the neuters of the bees and ants; and that those 
specimens which are met with, without wings, in the nest, after the 
period of pairing, are females which have pulled off their wings, and 
have survived the process of oviposition. ' 
The nature of these various kinds of individuals, however, requires 
a more minute investigation than it has yet received. Burmeister well 
observes, that there is no other instance in the whole animal world in 
which the undeveloped young labour for the old; and is thence in- 
duced to doubt that the workers are really larva, to which may be 
added the circumstance that these so-called larvee still retain their 
* The account given by Mr. Davis of insects, like Wemenre! lighting in swarms 
upon a ship at anchor off Bahia in Brazil, and biting off their wings, appears to re- 
late toa small species of Termes. (Ent. Mag. No. 24.) 
