14 



existing species, have been found, so that there has been no difficulty in 

 classifying them. 



If the structure of the. wing is to be taken into consideration, there can 

 be no doubt that the discovery of the giant termite from Port Darwin-^- 

 Mastotennes durwiiiiensis, described by me in the " Proceedings of the 

 Linnean Society of New South Wales" — brings them almost into touch with 

 the family Blattidce (cockroaches). Termites under some circumstances 

 look so like earwigs that one of our greatest authorities on the N europtera 

 actually described a supposed " wingless termite" from Japan under the 

 name of llodotermes jajionicus, but in the following volume appeared ti 

 note from the author stating that he had discovered, upon comparison with 

 a Japanese Forficida, that his new species was a damaged earwig. Dr. 

 Hagen says, in the " Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 

 1868," the three families Termitina, Blattina, and Forficidina are co- 

 ordinated and very nearly allied. 



Minute anatomical details may bring them into line with some of the 

 yeiiroptcra, but on the comi^reliensive grounds that all the large divisions 

 of insects were classified upon, into what are known as Orders, the outward 

 structure has been taken as the standard, and they take their group-name 

 from the form and structure of the wings. Now, the termite wings are 

 much more like straight wings (Ortho2yiera) than lace wings (Neuroiytera) ; 

 those of the genera Tarmes, Eutcrr/ifs, and allied groujis being even 

 more primitive in their venation than the more specialised Mastotermes 

 and Calotermes. 



In their metamorphoses a baby termite undergoes only a gradual 

 change, like the little cricket or grasshopper — an active-feeding creature 

 from the time it emerges from the egg, till, by successive moults, it gradu- 

 ally reaches its full size, and with a final casting of the skin comes forth a 

 perfect worker, soldier, or winged white ant. There are no abrupt 

 changes from larva to pupa and pupa to perfect insect as wc see in the 

 lace-winged flies. 



The life of a termite's nest is most remarkable from the very distinct 

 forms or casts of insects that are produced from the same eggs with no 

 apparent treatment of the baby larva? in their upbringing (though it 

 may exist, as the different feeding of the bees produce the queen bees). 

 The founding of a termite city has been told in my " Nature Study," 

 published in the Agricultural Gazette, N.S.W. (1903), so that only a brief 

 recapitulation is necessary here. When the swarms of winged males 

 and females are ready to emerge from a termitarium, the workers cut slits 

 through the solid clay walls, which the soldiers guard until a suitable 

 time, generally late in the afternoon, when they withdraw, and the 

 winged creatures swarm out in a continuous stream, flitting along with 

 their loose fragile wings, and swarming round the lighted lamps in the 

 early summer evenings, where they are well known under the name of 

 " Flying-ants," and drop their wings all over the place. Out of the 

 millions that swarrn out of a single nest, perhaps only half-a-dozen couples 



