CONSTITUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TERMITES. 285 
mandibles of the soldiers, or in the mouth-parts of their other 
fellow-inmates. 
It must be recognised that Calotermites are perfectly well 
aware of the presence or absence of the royal pair, and they 
start about providing fresh ones directly they are orphaned. 
The following observation is important in this connection. 
A nest was divided, say, into three smaller nests, in one of 
which the royal pair was retained; they were put into separate 
tubes, kept together and uncorked in the same waistcoat 
pocket. After three or four days larve of substitute royal 
forms were found in them, except in the one containing the 
royal pair. The colony in the tree from which the original 
nest was taken had not turned their attention to raising sub- 
stitute forms, though they were 30 or 40 centimetres distant 
from any king or queen; whereas those in the tubes, though in 
close proximity to a royal pair, had at once begun to provide 
substitutes. It follows that the existence of the royal couple 
is certainly not perceived by means of any odour which they 
emit; and this affords us another marked contrast with what 
is observed in the case of bees. 
The copulation of Termitidze has been extensively dis- 
cussed ; some writers believe it to be accomplished in the 
open air, but the more general opinion is that the presence of 
the king in the nest shows that it takes place there, and is 
repeated from time to time. I regarded the latter supposition 
as possibly correct directly I found that the king is invariably 
present in the nest, and that his bulk increases, though to a 
less extent, concomitantly with that of the queen. 
At last, on April 17th, 1891, about 11 a.m., I detected the 
king and queen in coitu in a glass jar containing a small 
Calotermes nest. The pair appeared to be about three years 
old, judging by their size. They stood end to end inastraight 
line with the tips of their abdomens applied to each other ; 
their attitude was normal, with the dorsum uppermost, except 
for a slight upward flexure of the apex of the abdomen. After 
some half-minute they separated, perhaps owing to the ex- 
