CONSTITUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TERMITES. 293 
nice they contain distinct scattered white specks, which are 
fragments of plaster. 
These Termite galleries are invariably very light, porous, 
and friable. When the Termites meet with large empty spaces 
while in process of enlarging their nest, they may fill them up 
by building a complicated labyrinth, as many ants are known 
to do (Pl. 18, figs. 14, 16); and they readily adapt such pro- 
jecting pieces of wood as the space may contain to what they 
are building by covering them over with the materials of 
construction, or cementing them suitably together. 
Excellent specimens of both classes of gallery can be obtained 
by putting Termites into a glass jar half full of broken-up 
cactus-phylloclades, and closed with a cork or merely witha 
sheet of paper (Pl. 18, fig. 17). 
If many such nests are formed, one or more can generally be 
kept alive for six, eight, or more months. I have published 
elsewhere an account of one of these nests, which I repeat 
textually. 
“For eight months I have kept a colony of Termes luci- 
fugus without king or queen in a jar half full of crushed-up 
phylloclades of Opuntia, and closed with a sheet of paper tied 
over the mouth instead of with a bung. ‘The jar holds three 
litres, and its mouth is wide and polished. 
“ At the beginning of April the Termites were seen to have 
settled in the bottom layer only of the rubbish, and the 
remainder, some 7 cm. in thickness, was quite uninhabited. 
It was not till the 20th of May that a few specimens appeared 
init. Some days later a semicircular gutter-shaped tunnel was 
found adhering to the walls of the empty part of the jar (the nest 
material occupying barely a half). This tunnel put the rub- 
bish into communication with the paper cover, which presented 
a small aperture large enough to admit the body of a Termite 
at the extremity of the tunnel. 
“ All kinds of forms in the colony (larve, nymphs, soldiers, 
workers, and winged adults) went backwards and forwards by 
this gallery, which in its greater part would only allow room 
for a single individual at a time, but which widened here and 
VOL. 89, PART 3.—NEW SER. U 
