THE TERMITE QUEEN. 381 



them, which may be roughly divided into three distinct sets. 

 First come the queen and her consort, and all those which are 

 destined to become perfect males and females. Then comes a 

 body of Termites with enormous heads, armed with strong and 

 sickle-like jaws. Lastly come the workers ; very much smaller 

 and slighter insects, without any weapons of offence. I need 

 hardly say that, as the Termites belong to the Neuropterous 

 insects, none of them have a sting. 



As is implied by the name, the chief labour of the colony is 

 carried on by the workers, who outnumber the others many 

 times over. It is the workers who feed the queen, and also 

 carry off the eggs as fast as they are laid, so as to deposit them 

 in spots fit for hatching them. In order to enable them to gain 

 access to the queen, the royal cell is pierced all round with a 

 number of holes, which look exactly as if they had been bored 

 with a bradawl ; and, if a section of the nest be carefully made, 

 each of these holes will be seen to communicate directly with 

 the central hollow. 



Thus the queen is not only tended, but guarded with the care 

 which her office demands : for the whole of the nest, of what- 

 ever form it may be, is made of carefully-tempered clay, which 

 when dry is nearly as hard as stone, and in the very depths of 

 that nest, the royal cell, in itself a strong fort, is situated. So 

 important indeed is the queen, that if a Termite colony should 

 prove so noxious that it must be destroyed, an experienced 

 Termite- killer does not in the least trouble himself to destroy 

 in detail the vast army of workers and soldiers. It would, 

 indeed, be of little use to do so, for the queen lays such vast 

 numbers of eggs that even if some twenty or thirty thousand 

 Termites were killed, the loss would soon be made good. Know- 

 ing the habits of the insects, the Termite-hunter breaks into the 

 nest, searches for the royal cell, and carries it off. From that 

 moment the life of the community begins to flag, and in a short 

 time the nest, with its multitudinous ramifications, becomes 

 deserted, just as does a hive from which the actual and possible 

 queens are taken. 



Now for the third kind of Termite; namely, the Soldier. One 

 of these soldiers is represented in the illustration on page 382. 

 The soldiers take on themselves the defence of the nest and the 

 direction of the workers. If a breach be made in the nest, out 



