THE DOKYLUS. 



421 



except to the entomologist. Its colour is brown-yellow, and the 

 wings are transparent, but clouded with brown. The first of the 

 two figures represents the winged male. Both in Africa and 

 Java the male Doryli are known to be nocturnal in their 

 habits, and, like many of our English insects, fly into houses 

 at night, immediately making their way towards the lamp or 

 candle which attracted them. The worker is very small in pro- 

 portion to the male, as may be seen by reference to the line 

 on the right of the illustration, which represents the average 

 length of the worker. Its colour is nothing but brown, and 



4 ^ 



Male. Fig. 212.— Dorylus longicorois. 



(Brownish yellow.) 



Worker. 



only the peculiarly shaped head indicates its relationship to 

 the Mutillas. 



It is a very strange thing that the male should be quite a 

 familiar insect, the worker tolerably plentiful, and not a female 

 to be found anywhere. This difficulty probably arises from the 

 great dissimilarity between the sexes, a phenomenon which is 

 very common in the Mutillas. It is conjectured that the real 

 female of this species may be an odd-looking creature which has 

 been called Dichthadia glaberrima. This is a flatfish, grub-like 

 creature, about half as long again as the male insect, and having 

 its tail curiously forked, something like the tail of a fish. Indeed, 

 the whole creature looks very much like one of those mother- 

 of-pearl fishes made in China and used as card-markers or 

 counters. The name Dichthadia, which signifies something 

 which is cleft or split in two, refers to this form of the tail ; and 



