WHA T I SAW IN AN ANTS NEST. 335 



diplomatic courtiers, duly arrange for the royal marriages of 

 the future. As Mr. Bates remarks, " The wonderful part in 

 the history of the termites is, that not only is there a rigid 

 division of labour, but nature has given to each class a struc- 

 ture of body adapting it to the kind cf labour it has to 

 perform. The males and females form a class apart \ they 

 do no kind of work, but in the course of growth acquire 

 wings to enable them to issue forth and disseminate their 

 kind. The workers and soldiers are wingless, and differ 

 solely in the shape and armature of the head. This member 

 in the labourers is smooth and rounded, the mouth being 

 adapted for the working of the materials in building the hive. 

 In the soldiers the head is of very large size, and is provided 

 in almost every kind with special organs of offence and 

 defence in the form of horny processes resembling pikes, 

 tridents, and so forth. . . . The course of human events in 

 our day seems, unhappily, to make it more than ever neces- 

 sary for the citizens of civilised and industrious communities 

 to set apart a numerous armed class for the protection of 

 the rest; in this, nations only do what nature has of old 

 done for the termites. The soldier termes, however, has 

 not only the fighting instinct and function ; he is constructed 

 as a soldier, and carries his weapons not in his hand but 

 growing out of his body." When a colony of termites is 

 disturbed, the ordinary citizens disappear and the military 

 are called out. The soldiers mounted the breach, says Mr. 

 Bates, " to cover the retreat of the workers," when a hole 

 was made in the archway of one of their covered roads, and 

 with military precision the rear-men fall into the vacant 

 places in the front ranks as the latter are emptied by the 

 misfortune of war. 



In a termite colony there is but one king and queen, the 

 royal couple being the true parents of the colony. The 

 state-apartments are situated in the centre of the hive, and 

 are strictly guarded by workers. Both king and queen are 

 wingless, and are of larger size than their subjects. The 

 queen engages in a continual round of maternal duties, the 



