Cuap. VIII. A TERITES (EXODUS. 254 
aware that the very existence of their species depended on the successful 
emigration and marriages of their brcthers and sisters. They clear the 
way for their bulky but fragile bodies, and bite holes through the outer 
walls for their escape. The exodus is not completed in one day, but 
continues until all the males and females have emerged from their pupa 
integuments, and flown away. It taxes place on moist, close evenings, 
or on cloudy mornings: they are much attracted by the lights in houses, 
and fly by myriads into chambers, filling the air with a loud rustling 
noise, and often falling in such numbers that they extinguish the lamps. 
Almost as soon as they touch ground they wriggle off their wings, to 
aid which operation there is a special provision in the structure of the 
organs, a seam running across near their roots and dividing the horny 
nervures. To prove that this singular mutilation was voluntary on the 
part of the insects, I repeatedly tried to detach the wings by force, but 
could never succeed whilst they were fresh, for they always tore out by 
the roots. Few escape the innumerable enemies which are on the alert 
at these times to devour them: ants, spiders, lizards, toads, bats, and 
goatsuckers. The waste of life is astonishing. The few that do survive 
pair and become the kings and queens of new colonies. I ascertained 
this by finding single pairs a few days after the exodus, which I always 
examined and proved te be males and females, established under a leaf, 
a clod of earth, or wandering about under the edges of new tumuli. 
The females are then not gravid. I once found a newly-married pair 
in a fresh cell tended by a few workers. 
The office of Termites in these hot countries is to hasten the decom- 
position of the woody and decaying parts of vegetation. In this they 
perform what in temperate latitudes is the task of other orders of insects. 
Many points in their natural history still remain obscure. We have 
seen that there are males and females, which grow, reach the adult 
winged state, and propagate their kind like all other insects. Unlike 
others, however, which are always, each in its sphere, provided with 
the means of maintaining their own in the battle of life, these are help- 
less creatures, which, without external aid, would soon perish, entailing 
the extinction of their kind. The family to which they belong is there- 
fore provided with other members, not males or females, but individuals 
deprived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in body and mind 
that they are adapted and impelled to devote their lives for the good of 
their species. But I have not explained how these neuter individuals, 
soldiers and workers, come to be distinct castes. This is still a knotty 
point, which I could do nothing to solve. Neuter bees and ants are 
known to be undeveloped females. I thought it a reasonable hypo- 
thesis, on account of the total absence of intermediate individuals 
connecting the two forms, that worker and soldier might be in a similar 
way female and male whose development had been in some way 
arrested. A French anatomist, however, M. Lespés,* believes to 
* “Recherches sur l’Organisation et les Mceurs du Termite Lucifuge, Annales des 
Sciences Naturelles,” 4™® série, tome 5, fasc. 4 et 5. Paris, 1856. M. Lespés states 
also to have found two distinct forms of pupa in the same species, one only of which 
he believes to become kings and queens. I observed nothing of the kind in Termes 
arenarius. Dr. Hagen mentions, in his monograph, cases of beaked workers and 
