White Ants 



The four wings are very long and when in repose are laid flat 

 along the back, extending far beyond the tip of the abdomen. 

 They are membranous and most of the veins are longitudinal. 

 The hind wings are of almost precisely the same shape and size 

 as the front wings, and across near the base of each wing is a line 

 of weakness along which the wing breaks off after the so-called 

 nuptial flight. The wingless individuals in each colony are, with 

 most species, excessively numerous and as a rule they are divided 

 into two castes, namely, the ordinary workers and the soldiers. 

 The so-called soldiers also exist with the true ants but they have 

 not in these creatures become such a structurally well differen- 

 tiated caste as with the termites. In the latter the jaws have be- 

 come enormously developed and in some cases the soldier is five 

 times the size of a worker. Then, in some species a certain por- 

 tion of the workers have become changed in form particularly by 

 the elongation of the head into a long, nose-like process at the 

 tip of which is a hole through which is exuded a fluid which is 

 used in making or mending the walls of the habitation. This 

 caste is known as the nasuti, or nosed ones, a term which must 

 at once remind the admirers of Sienkiewicz of the Polish warrior, 

 Kharlamp. 



The order Isoptera reaches its highest development in tropi- 

 cal regions, and the reading world has been familiar with the main 

 details of the economy of the extraordinary species which build 

 the great ant-mounds in Africa since the days when Smeathman 

 the English traveler, described them in print more than a hun- 

 dred years ago. The females, or queens, of some of these 

 African species grow to be of enormous size. The abdomen, 

 swollen with eggs, sometimes becomes as big as a potato, or 

 20,000 or 30,000 times the bulk of a worker. The rate at which 

 the eggs are laid is extraordinary and it is stated at sixty a 

 minute, or 80,000 and upwards in a day. Listening to an account 

 of this extraordinary egg-laying, which was given before the 

 Biological Society of Washington by Mr. O. F. Cook, a friend 

 remarked to the writer in a whisper, "What a fortune that 

 would mean with eggs at twenty-five cents a dozen 1 " 



In the United States there exist comparatively few species, 

 and only one which has a northward range into the territory 

 occupied by most of the readers of this book. This is Termes 

 flavipes Koll. It is probably a true American species but was 



355 



