368 NEUROPTERA ' chap. 



details, but is nevertheless of great value. Though his state- 

 ments have been doubted they are truthful, and have been 

 confirmed by Savage.^ T. hellicosus forms buildings compar- 

 able to human dwellings ; some of them being twenty feet in 

 height and of great solidity. In some parts of West Africa 

 these nests were, in Smeathman's time, so numerous that they 

 had the appearance of villages. Each nest was the centre of 

 a community of countless numbers of individuals ; subter- 

 ranean passages extended from them in various directions. The 

 variety of forms in one of these communities has not been well 

 ascertained, but it would seem that the division of labour is 

 carried to a great extent. The soldiers are fifteen times the size 

 of the workers. The community is dependent on one royal 

 couple. It is the opinion of the natives that if that couple perish 

 so also does the community ; and if this be correct we may 

 conclude that this species has not a perfect system of replacing 

 royal couples. The queen attains an almost incredible size 

 and fertility. Smeathman noticed the great and gradual growth 

 of the abdomen, and says it enlarges " to such an enormous size 

 that an old queen will have it increased so as to be fifteen 

 hundred or two thousand times the bulk of the rest of her body, 

 and twenty or thirty thousand times the bulk of a labourer, as 

 I have found by carefully weighing and computing the different 

 states." He also describes the rate at which the eggs are pro- 

 duced, saying that there is a constant peristaltic movement^ of 

 the abdomen, " so that one part or other alternately is rising 

 and sinking in. perpetual succession, and the matrix seems never 

 at rest, but is always protruding eggs to the amount (as I 

 have frequently counted in old queens) of sixty in a minute, or 

 eighty thousand and upward in one day of twenty-four hours." 



This observer, after giving an account of the great swarms of 

 perfect winged Insects that are produced by this species, and after 

 describing the avidity with which they are devoured by the 

 Hymenopterous ants and other creatures, adds : " I have discoursed 

 with several gentlemen upon the taste of the white ants ; and on 

 comparing notes we have always agreed that they are most 



1 Ann. Nat. Hist. (2) v. 1850, p. 92. 



^'Dr. G. D. Haviland informs the writer that he thinks it probable this so-called 

 peristaltic movement is merely the result of alarm ; he has not, however, had any 

 opportunity of observing T. hellicosus. 



