INSECT COMMUNITIES 303 



with a few blind strokes of their huge jaws, incidentally 

 providing themselves with a hearty meal. Yet they de- 

 cline to eat the dead of alien tribes that have been slain 

 in battle. In a word, these so-called soldiers seem to 

 impose upon, rather than to protect, their community, 

 and one marvels that they should be tolerated within its 

 walls. 



The propagating class among termites consists mainly 

 of individuals which are winged when they reach maturity. 

 At a certain season of the year these young kings and 

 queens are produced by thousands, and on a given day 

 they all leave the nest. Most of them are snapped up by 

 birds, reptiles, and other insectivorous creatures, but a few 

 escape and go off in pairs to found new colonies. It is a 

 curious fact that immediately they reach the ground after 

 this flight these insects tear off their own wings — a feat 

 that is rendered easy by the suture, or line of weakness, 

 which occurs in each wing near its base. The wingless 

 king is not an imposing personage ; but before her reign 

 is far advanced, the queen develops in a most extraordinary 

 manner. In the case of the West African warrior termite 

 ( Termes bellicosus) her enormous abdomen may weigh even- 

 tually 1500 or 2000 times as much as the rest of her body, 

 while she may produce as many as sixty eggs per minute. 

 In a word, she becomes a vast egg-laying machine, helpless 

 and inert. The queen and her consort dwell within a 

 special royal chamber at the very heart of the termitarium. 

 " I once succeeded," writes Professor K. Escherich, " in 

 extracting the royal chamber from a nest of the African 

 warlike termite, and examining it through an incision, 

 just large enough to admit sufficient light to make the 

 interior visible without disturbing the inmates, I beheld a 

 very animated and interesting scene. In the background 

 lay the enormous white queen, three inches long, and so 



