70 SANTAREM. Chap. I. 



devote their lives for the good of their species. But I 

 have not explained how these neuter individuals, 

 soldiers and workers, come to be distinct castes. This 

 is still a knotty point, which I could do nothing to 

 solve. Neuter bees and ants are known to be unde- 

 veloped females. I thought it a reasonable hypothesis, 

 on account of the total absence of intermediate indi- 

 viduals connecting the two forms, that worker and 

 soldier might be in a similar way female and male 

 whose develojDment had been in some way arrested. A 

 French anatomist, however, M . Lespes, * believes to 

 have found by dissection imperfect males and females 

 in each of the castes. The correctness of his observa- 

 tions is doubted by competent judges ;f if his conclusion 

 be true, the biology of Termites is indeed a mystery. 



* Recherches sur 1' Organization et les Moeurs du Termite Lucifuge, 

 Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 4 me serie, tome 5, fasc. 4 et 5. 

 Paris, 1856. M. Lespes states also to have found two distinct forms of 

 pupa in the same species, one only of which he believes to become kings 

 and queens. I observed nothing of the kind in Termes arenarius. 

 Dr. Hagen mentions, in his monograph, cases of beaked workers and 

 winged soldiers. I always found the beaked individuals to be of 

 the fighting caste ; with regard to winged soldiers and other curious 

 forms of pupa? which have occurred, they are probably either mon- 

 strosities, or belong to species having a peculiar mode of develop- 

 ment. I did not meet with such ; I found, however, a species whose 

 soldier class did not differ at all, except in the fighting instinct, from 

 the workers. 



*f* Gerstaecker, Bericht fiber den Leistungen, &c, der Entomologie, 

 1856. p. 6. Hagen, Linnsea Entomologica, 1858, p. 24. 



