ON AN UNRECORDED HABIT OF WHITE ANTS, 11g 
JUDICIAL ENTOMOLOGY 
AND ON AN UNRECORDED HABIT 
OF WHITE ANTS: 
BY 
HENRY TRYON. 
(Read on the oth September, 1887.) 
Our bodies, after death, unless they are hermetically sealed up, 
are tenanted by different insects, and these, whilst they live at the 
expense of the different tissues of which it is composed, gradually 
determine its dissolution. ‘The body is not, however, occupied by 
these various insects at one and the same time, but there is a 
definite and remarkable succession in which their presence is 
manifested, one class of insects existing in it, till, partly by its 
agency, the body is rendered suitable for the members of a second 
class, and so on for those of a third—for these several insects do 
not feed indifferently on the same juices or tissues. Moreover, 
each of the insects composing these classes requires a definite 
time to multiply and undergo its metamorphosis and different 
evolutions. Owing to these facts, entomologists have of late years 
been able to lend important aid in judicial inquiries, and especially 
at such times as when a body has been found, and it is important 
to know what period has elapsed since the death occurred of the 
individual to which this body may be referred, whether that indi- 
vidual met with his or her end by homicide or through the 
operation of natural causes. (This general statement was consider- 
ably amplified by the author, who exhibited numerous insects and 
arachnids, representative of the different and successive classes 
of destroyers, and dilated on the rdle they severally performed— 
these belonged to the dipterous, coleopterous, and lepidopterous 
families, &c.—ED.) 
In the Comptes Rendus, 96, 1883, I., pp. 1433-1435, M. P. 
Mégnin, introduces the subject of ‘ L’Application de l‘entomo- 
logie & la Médicine légale,” with the statement that “there is an 
occasion on which the medical jurist finds himself especially 
embarrassed ; this is, when he is brought face to face with a dead 
body which is quite dry, and, in fact, reduced to the state of a 
