294 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



" in making fresh observations upon bees, the more 

 firm is my conviction, that the time is riot yet arrived 

 in which we can draw satisfactory conclusions re- 

 specting their policy. It is only by varying and com- 

 bining experiments in a thousand ways, and by 

 placing these industrious flies in circumstances more 

 or less removed from their ordinary state, that we can 

 hope to ascertain the right direction of their instinct, 

 and the true principles of their government*." What 

 we have to state, therefore, concerning these interest- 

 ing communities, must be considered only an ap- 

 proximation to the truth as near as we can bring it 

 from the facts already ascertained. 



GOVERNMENT OF WHITE ANTS, OR TERMITES. 



THE government of the extraordinary insect co- 

 lonies belonging to the genus Termes does not 

 appear to be quite so well understood as their 

 labours in architecture and their destructive pro- 

 pensities ; for though the different orders are suffi- 

 ciently distinct, their analogies to bees and ants have 

 not yet been clearly ascertained. From what has 

 been observed by Smeathmanf, it appears there are 

 four different descriptions of these insects in each 

 community; and Latreille has discovered a fifth, 

 whence we have workers, nymphs, soldiers, males, 

 and females. - 



The workers or labourers are not in their perfect 

 state, like the workers among the common ants, but 

 are only grubs (larvce) as hatched from the egg. 

 When full-grown they are about a quarter of an inch 

 long, and they constitute the most numerous part of 

 the population, there being at least a hundred 

 workers to one of the soldiers, from which they 

 differ in having round heads and short mandibles. 

 They are the most active members of the community, 

 * OEuvres, x. 194. f Phil, Trans, vol. Ixxi. 



