.334 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



eggs deposited by the sovereign-mother being at once seized 

 by the workers and conveyed to special or "nursery cells," 

 where the young are duly tended and brought up. Once 

 a year, at the beginning of the rainy season, winged termites 

 appear in the hive as developments of certain of the eggs 

 laid by the queen-termite. These latter are winged males 

 and females (Fig. 65, i), the two sexes being present in equal 

 numbers. Some of these, after shedding their wings, become 

 the founders kings and queens of new communities, the 

 privilege of sex being thus associated with the important and 

 self-denying work of perpetuating the species or race in time. 

 Sooner or later a termite family takes about a year to grow 

 a veritable exodus of the young winged termites takes 

 place ; and just before this emigration movement occurs, a 

 hive may be seen to be stocked with " termites " of all castes 

 and in all stages of development. The workers never 

 exhibit a change of form during their growth ; the soldiers 

 begin to differ from the workers in the possession of larger 

 heads and jaws ; whilst the young which are destined to be- 

 come the winged males and females are distinguished by the 

 early possession of the germs of wings which become larger 

 as the skin is successively moulted. Amongst the bees, 

 blind Huber supposed that an ordinary or neuter egg de- 

 velops into a queen bee if the larva is fed upon a special 

 kind of food "royal food," as it is called. Although some 

 entomological authorities differ from Huber with regard to 

 the exact means by which the queen bee is reared and 

 specialised from other larvae, yet the opinion thus expressed 

 possesses a large amount of probability. Whatever may be 

 the exact method or causes through or by which the queen 

 bee is developed, Mr. Bates strongly asserts that the dif- 

 ferences between the soldiers and worker termites are 

 distinctly marked from the egg. This latter observer 

 maintains that the difference is not due to variations in food 

 or treatment during their early existence, but is fixed and 

 apparent from the beginning of development. This fact 

 is worthy of note ; for it argues in favour of the view that if, 



