NEUROPTERA. 405 



Many travellers have spoken of these insects. They are met 

 with in the savannahs of North America, in Guyana, in Africa, 

 in New Holland, and even in Europe, whither they have been 

 imported. M. de Prefontaine relates that, when he was travelling in 

 Guyana, he saw the negroes besieging certain strange buildings, 

 which he calls ant-hills. They dared not attack them, except from a 

 distance, and with fire-arms, although they had taken the precaution 

 of digging all round them a little fosse filled with water, in which the 

 besieged would be drowned if they made a sortie. These were the 

 termites' nests. 



Perhaps it is to termites Herodotus alludes when he speaks of 

 ants which inhabit Bactria, and which, larger than a fox, eat a pound 

 of meat a day.* Retired in the sandy deserts, these gigantic insects 

 hollow out (says he) subterranean dwellings, and raise mounds of 

 golden sand, which the Indians carry away at the peril of their lives. 

 Pliny, who relates the same fables, adds that there were to be seen in 

 the Temple of Hercules the horns of these ants. Even in our own 

 days some travellers have repeated absurd fables about termites. 

 They have attributed to them a venom which one cannot breathe 

 without being poisoned ; they have said that a single bite was enough 

 to cause a mortal fever. The truth, as it is revealed to us by 

 conscientious observers, is still stranger than these fictions or errors. 

 The termites present curious modifications, on the nature of which 

 naturalists are not agreed. There are, in the first place, the perfect 

 insects, males and females, which are provided with wings ; then 

 there are the neuters, which are divided into soldiers, whose duty it is 

 to defend the nest, and into workers, upon whom devolve the 

 architectural works and household cares. These last are smaller than 

 the soldiers. Latreille and some other naturalists think that these 

 workers are the larva? of the termites. Smeathman thinks that the 

 soldiers are the pupae. M. de Quatrefages admits that the soldiers 

 are the neuters, and that the workers are recruited both from the 

 larvae and from the pupa;. It may be admitted, with other naturalists, 

 that the soldiers and the workers are neuters : the first, abortive 

 males ; the second, abortive females. Here is, indeed, what M. 

 Lespes has observed in the termites of the Landes. Among these 

 insects, the most numerous are the workers : their size is that of a 

 large ant, and their duties are to excavate galleries, to search for 

 provisions, and to take care of the eggs, the larvae, and the pupas. 



* De Quatrefages, " Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste," tome ii., p. 377. In i8mo. 

 Paris, 1854. 



