GOVERNMENT OF WHITE ANTS. 295 



being" incessantly employed in erecting, enlarging, or 

 repairing the buildings, foraging for provisions, or in 

 attending to the eggs and the young. 



The nymphs or pupae which were discovered by 

 Latreille, differ little from the workers, except in 

 having the rudiments of wings, or rather wings 

 folded up, as happens with butterflies in the state of 

 chrysalis*. They seem to be equally active as the 

 workers, which probably led Smeathman to over- 

 look their difference f. 



The soldiers were supposed by Smeathman to be 

 nymphs or pupae, but Latreille discovered that they 

 form a distinct order of perfect insects of neither sex, 

 and not imperfectly developed females, as is the case 

 with the workers among bees and common ants. 

 There is about one of these soldiers for every hun- 

 dred of the workers, and they are distinguished by 

 their being more than half an inch in length, nearly 

 fifteen times as large as a worker, and furnished with 

 a formidable pair of awl-shaped, jagged mandibles, 

 as hard as a crab's claw, and capable of inflicting a 

 painful wound. Their head likewise is strong, 

 horny, and larger than all the rest of the body. It 

 is the part of these to guard the colony, and defend 

 it from attack. 



The males and females, unlike the preceding, be- 

 come furnished with wings for the purpose of mi- 

 grating to establish new colonies, but afterwards 

 lose these wings, as do the females of common ants. 

 Like the males and females of the hive-bee, they are 

 exempt from all labour. These Smeathman has de- 

 nominated kings and queens ; though we must cau- 

 tion our readers not to take these terms according to 

 the strict letter, for they have, apparently, neither 

 power nor authority in the community, and are more 



* See Insect Architecture, p. 287. 

 f See Insect Transformations, p. 294, 5. 



