284 Miscellaneous. 



condition. The jar should remain open, to avoid mould. The 

 insects, moreover, never make the slightest attempt to escape. 



Under these conditions the Termites live verj- well. At the end 

 of from two to three weeks it m;iy he seen that they have selected a 

 domicile hetween the earth and the wood, and that they have also 

 heen feeding. Their abdomens, which were formerly flat, are now 

 slightly convex. They are very lively and extremely active. The 

 narrow space wherein they are living, closed on every side, contains 

 a little tine woody powder, coming from the wood the surface of 

 which has been attacked. Later on they have attacked it more 

 directly at some point or other, and have commenced to excavate in 

 it the commencement of a gallery. 



Some pairs obtained on April 29 in the present year were alive 

 and in perfect health on July 4. They had manifestly increased in 

 size, and in their swollen and distended abdomens the intersegmental 

 membranes appeared as fine white borders separating the black 

 disks of the segments. The bulkier abdomens of certain specimens 

 clearly distinguished them as females. 



On August 30 the Termites were still thoroughly alive, but some- 

 what difficult to discover, since they had jienetrated deeper into the 

 wood, and were lodged in a globular chamber, to which access was 

 given bv a narrow orifice in connexion with the surrounding earth. 

 The white abdominal rings were broader, and the black disks were 

 entirelv separated one from another. 



On October 15 I found in one of my jars six sexual Termites 

 assembled in the same cavity, which a slight splitting of the wood 

 had revealed. With them were two young workers, which had 

 verv recently emerged, since they were of very small size, especially 

 one of them, whose transparent body showed no ingested matter in 

 the alimentary canal. At one point of the wall was attached a large 

 egg. As for the adults, they were still in perfect condition, but 

 were less active than formerly and obstinately shunned the light. 

 The females, however, appeared scarcely more distended than in the 

 month of August, and their abdomens were still far from the 

 monstrous proportions observed in the case of the normal queens of 

 the old nests. This difference is easily explained by the as yet 

 moderate development of the ovaries, which, at the outset of their 

 functional activity, are capable of furnishing only a very limited 

 number of eggs. 



Be this as it may, it is already proved by this experiment that 

 the winged Termites issuing from the swarms are perfectly capable 

 of living without the assistance of workers of their own species, and 

 that their pairs develop into king and queen, the founders of a new 

 colony. Thus is to be explained the fact that the winged indivi- 

 duals are always sexually immature, and have never been seen in 

 coitu : they do not arrive at sexual maturity until after a somewhat 

 lengthy interval, the duration of which my observations enable me 

 to fix at five or six months. — Comptes Bend us, t. cxix. no. 19 

 (November 5, 1894), pp. 804-806. 



