Chap. I. . WHITE ANTS. 69 



voluntary, on the part of the insects, I repeatedly tried 

 to detach the wings by force, but could never succeed 

 whilst they were fresh, for they always tore out by the 

 roots. Few escape the innumerable enemies which are 

 on the alert at these times to devour them ; ants, 

 spiders, lizards, toads, bats, and goat-suckers. The 

 waste of life is astonishing. The few that do survive 

 pair and become the kings and queens of new colonies. 

 I ascertained this by finding single pairs a few days 

 after the exodus, which I always examined and proved 

 to be males and females, established under a leaf, a 

 clod of earth, or wandering about under the edges of 

 new tumuli. The females are then not gravid. I once 

 found a newly-married pair in a fresh cell tended by a 

 few workers. 



The office of Termites in these hot countries is to 

 hasten the decomposition of the woody and decaying parts 

 of vegetation. In this they perform what in temperate 

 latitudes is the task of other orders of insects. Many 

 points in their natural history still remain obscure. We 

 have seen that there are males and females, which grow, 

 reach the adult winged state, and propagate their kind 

 like all other insects. Unlike others, however, which 

 are always, each in its sphere, provided with the means 

 of maintaining their own in the battle of life, these are 

 helpless creatures, which, without external aid, would 

 soon perish, entailing the extinction of their kind. The 

 family to which they belong is therefore provided with 

 other members, not males or females, but individuals 

 deprived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in 

 body and mind that they are adapted and impelled to 



