LIMITATION OF FAMILIES 125 



then becomes brown, and in a few hours is black. In six days 

 there is a second moult, after which the young insect is black, with 

 spots and bands of white, and coloured streaks along the posterior 

 end of the body. In about another week there is another moult, 

 and the coloured streaks expand to form rosy patches. In less 

 than three weeks there have been six moults, with successive 

 changes from pink to yellow and blue, and the insect in its final 

 form is chiefly black with blue and rosy marks. Female green 

 grasshoppers have nearly always a long ovipositor at the tip of 

 the abdomen, and with this dig a shelter for the eggs. Crickets 

 have a long ovipositor, and do nothing for their young after the 

 eggs have been laid in a suitable hole. The mole-crickets make 

 burrows for themselves underground, using their strong spade-like 

 front legs for the purpose, but the female also constructs a special 

 chamber in which about a hundred eggs are laid and where there 

 is a space for the newly hatched young to lurk. The clear-winged 

 stone-flies, dragon-flies and may-flies simply drop their eggs into 

 water, and there the larvae, as I have described in an earlier chapter, 

 live a totally different life from that of the adults. 



The termites, or so-called white ants, which, however, are related 

 to may-flies and dragon-flies rather than to ants, show one of 

 the most remarkable developments of family life in the animal 

 kingdom. The conditions differ a good deal in different species. 

 Each colony is really a patriarchal family, the descendants of a 

 single pair living with their parents in a community and playing 

 different parts in it. One of the simplest cases is that of a European 

 termite the habits of which have been studied in Sicily. A winged 

 pair take up their abode in a dead or decaying tree, living on the 

 rotting wood and hollowing out chambers and burrows. They 

 reproduce slowly, being surrounded by fifteen or twenty young 

 after the first year, but more rapidly afterwards, and in a few years 

 the family may reach as many as a thousand. The eggs that 

 hatch out produce larvae which are at first true males and females. 

 Some of these develop slowly, and in rather more than a year 

 become perfect winged insects, and leave the colony in pairs to 

 found new colonies elsewhere, after having spent their youth, so to 

 say, as servants in their parents' house. Other individuals develop 

 more quickly, but when fully grown are blind and wingless. Their 

 reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development, 

 and their jaws and heads become of enormous size. In the more 

 highly developed colonies, these individuals, known as soldiers, are 



