CONSTITUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TERMITES. 25 



{b) Termes lucifugus. 



Experiments on this species are much more difficult, and 

 can only be carried out in large glass receptacles, which do 

 not permit of the necessary observations. Substitute forms 

 were easily obtainable in greater or less numbers in the few 

 cases in which the Termites survived in abundance and in 

 good health for some months. On this point I have nothing 

 to add to what is recorded in other parts of the present work. 



*The complementary queens are objects of tender care not 

 only on the part of the workers, but of the larvae, and are 

 much more assiduously cleaned than the substitute queens of 

 Calotermes. Five or six companions will stand round one 

 of these queens at the same time, one cleaning her legs, another 

 the antennae, a third the abdomen, &c.* 



Their nutrition exhibits the same features as those related 

 for Calotermes. 



Conclusion. 



The facts recorded justify the conclusion that the 

 saliva of both Termes and Calotermes exercises a 

 marvellous influence on individuals in process of 

 becoming perfect insects; it effects their transfor- 

 mation into substitute or complementary royal forms. 

 This is substantially a most remarkable phenomenon 

 of neoteinia. But whereas neoteinia, or the sexual 

 maturity of forms retaining larval characteristics, is 

 dependent in Amphibia on the environment^ in Ter- 

 mitidse it is essentially subordinate to the nutrition. 



II. Development of the Soldiers and Workers, 



Termitidse possess three special castes — workers, soldiers, 

 and neoteinic forms (according to the expression used in the 

 preceding paragraph). The latter are not only arrested in 



