CONSTITUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TERMITES. 23 



receive it from the one which secretes it and clearly provides 

 it for them as an article of diet. 



The assimilation of a drop requires a certain number of 

 acts of deglutition, which may be counted, usually four or five. 



Examples may sometimes be seen to perform several such 

 acts in order to swallow their own saliva as it trickles from the 

 labium. 



Termitidse do not habitually drink ; but Calotermites 

 (imagos, soldiers, &c.) which are moribund from drought may 

 be seen to apply the mouth to wood saturated with water and 

 suck the latter up, keeping the mandibles still and moving the 

 rest of the mouth parts. When the water is drained from one 

 spot they move to another. 



Other parched examples (soldiers kept some time in a dry 

 place) have been observed to have recourse to a drop of water 

 placed in a watch-glass, in which they were found. When the 

 watch-glass was examined from below, the soldiers were seen 

 to move both the mandibles and maxillary palpi when drink- 

 ing, holding the legs as erect as possible, and the abdomen 

 turned up so as not to wet the body. 



We may disregard these exceptional cases to consider how 

 and when the diflferent forms are nourished. 



Wood-meal is eaten by all except the very young, which 

 first begin to do so when the apex of the mandibles and 

 maxillsB becomes coloured. This statement applies equally 

 to the dejecta, vomit, exuviae, and dead bodies, except that the 

 young appear to feed on the two former substances earlier 

 than on wood. 



I shall specially mention the following phenomena as having 

 been observed : the soldiers are sometimes supplied with vomit 

 standing mouth to mouth ; they also regurgitate it ; the royal 

 forms feed alternately on each other's dejecta; large examples 

 may solicit from small. 



Saliva is given or yielded in abundance to larvae which are 

 too young to eat wood, and to those in course of becoming 

 royal substitutes, and a certain quantity is also given to the 

 other small-headed forms. 



