15 



may survive their many enemies and found a fresh colony, for Nature is 

 very lavish in her superabundance of life. The typical winged termite is 

 dark brown or yellowish, with a more or less rounded head, with many- 

 jointed antennas the segments of wliich are bead-like in form and fringed 

 with fine hairs; the eyes are large and well developed, and most species 

 have simple ocelli on the top of the flattened head, while the mouth parts 

 beneath are hidden from view. The thorax is short and broad, attached 

 to the head by a very short neck, and the legs well adapted for run- 

 ning about ; the wings consist of two pairs, the front and hind ones, 

 elongate and narrow, roun(ied at the tips, and when laid over the back 

 reaching a considerable distance beyond the tip of the elongate flattened 

 abdomen, which is round at the tip, and furnished with two short-jointed 

 appendages called the cerci, or anal appendices. Th venation of even 

 the most specialised forms is very simple when compared with the com- 

 plicated network of veins observable in the wings of most insects, and 

 most of Ihem are opaque or blackish in tint; at the base of each wing is 

 a curious cross nervure, which enables them to break off their wings when 

 thev have served their purpose of fiyiiig out from the nest, and wcjiild l)c 

 only an encumbrance when they started liousekeei)ing under logs or in 

 the ground. The new nest is started by this pair, a male and female, 

 ])oitularly called the king and queen; and after copiilution tlie female 

 becomes gravid, and her abdomen becomes a mass of egg-tubes, increasing 

 rapidly in size, until finally, while the rest of the head, thorax, and legs 

 have remained the original size, the abdomen becomes a circular, sausage- 

 like shape, white, with the integument so swollen that the closely-fitting 

 bands of chiton that once covered the whole surface are so divided that 

 they only form dark transverse bands. Here she remains for the term of 

 her natural life, and, if belonging to a mound-forming species, the 

 workers and soldiers of her species, who are always wandering about in 

 small companies, and thus find the helpless pair, set to work to Avait 

 upon them, and form the foundations of a nest over and around them, 

 tending the eggs as they are laid, feeding the larvoo as they are hatched, 

 and finally, reinforced by them as they reach maturity, the first members 

 of the small colony soon increase the size of the mound, and form a 

 regular nest. What becomes of the prince consort after the queen is 

 fairly started as an egg-laying machine I do not know ; he does not appear 

 to be necessary, and apparently disappears. I have never found one in 

 the regular royal chamber in which the queen is installed in every well- 

 constructed nest, though writers upon some of the African species always 

 mention the royal pair in the queen chamber. The nest is full of inter- 

 mediate forms of larvaj from the size of a pin's-point of white matter to 

 the almost fully-developed soldiers and workers, showing the structural 

 difference of the head, but still requiring the final moult to be perfectly 

 formed. The immature winged forms are easily recognised by the large 

 soft bodies and rounded wing-pads standing out on the shoulders. After 

 the royal pair we come to the soldiers and workers, whiph are sexless. 



