Chap. I. WHITE ANTS. 63 



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 mate- 

 rials 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 or defence in the form 

 of horny processes resembling pikes, tridents, and so 

 forth. Some species do not possess these extraordi- 

 nary projections, but have, in compensation, greatly 

 lengthened jaws, which are shaped in some kinds as 

 sickles, in others as sabres and saws. 



The course of human events in our day seems, 

 unhappily, to make it more than ever necessary 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. 



Whenever a colony of Termites is disturbed, the 

 workers are at first the only members of the com- 

 munity seen ; these quickly disappear through the 

 endless ramified galleries of which a Termitarium is 

 composed, and soldiers make their appearance. The 

 observations of Smeathman on the soldiers of a species 

 inhabiting tropical Africa are often quoted in books on 

 Natural History, and give a very good idea of their 

 habits. I was always amused at the pugnacity dis- 



