THE WEB OF LIFE 335 



factories that never close, but go on night and day without 

 ceasing. In most cases, the night is the busiest time, 

 for Termites are distinctly nocturnal. 



Enumeration is always interesting. Messrs. Andrews 

 and Middleton counted the comings in and goings out with 

 great patience. 



'In one case the number of Termites going into the nest 

 each hour varied from 1,702 between 1 and 2 p.m. to 

 8,100 between 2 and 3 a.m., while in the same case the 

 numbers going out of the nest were 1,194 between 12 noon 

 and 1 p.m. and 6,820 between 1 and 2 a.m.' 



Thus the traffic in the arcades of the termitary is greatest 

 in the middle of the night, and least at noon. 



Very striking in the Termite community is the specializa- 

 tion of reproduction. It is practically left to the royal 

 pair. In some cases there are several royal pairs. They 

 alone are reproductive ; all the thousands of other members 

 are productive and protective and domestic. The queen 

 is like a grotesque caricature of fertility. As Smeathman 

 observed, the abdomen becomes dilated with eggs until 

 it is ' 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 '. ' It 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 '. Yet associated with 

 this f ertility is an equally surprising longevity, for the queen 

 may live for several years. The male's tenure of life is 

 unknown. 



Another fact worth thinking about is the convergence 

 in some details between the ant community and the white 



