212 



THE FOOD OF ANIMALS 



vegetarian, or mainly so, in habit, the most interesting are the 

 various kinds of White Ant, more properly known as Termites 

 (fig. 445), for they differ widely from the true Ants, which belong 

 to the order Hymenoptera. Termites live in complex communi- 

 ties, of which details will be given elsewhere, and one of the 

 two European species (Calotermes flavicollis) has been very 

 carefully studied in Sicily by Grassi and Sandias. The com- 

 munities of this species live within decaying or dead trees, and 

 the primary food is wood in which decay has begun to make its 





Fig. 445. Termites or White Ants. Male above, queen in centre, worker and soldier below 



appearance. This substance is but very slowly digested, and the 

 voided pellets, from which the nutritious parts have only been 

 partly absorbed, are used once more as food, and so on till finally 

 exhausted. Very young individuals are fed on the saliva of the 

 older ones, and the secretion in question is therefore different in 

 nature from saliva ordinarily so called, which is simply a digestive 

 fluid without nourishing properties. Indeed it may be noted 

 here that such terms as ''saliva" and "bile' are very loosely 

 applied when lower animals are described, for there is an un- 

 warrantable tendency, chiefly resulting from our limited know- 



