THE WHITE AXTS. 139 



the larvae attack them from beneath. The young larvae, according to Mr. Bates, M. Lespes, Dr. 

 Fritz Miiller, and others, are all exactly alike, but before they have attained half the length of the 

 full-grown workers, the appearance of the first rudiments of wings serves to distinguish the larvae 

 from which sexual individuals will originate from those of the soldiers and workers. It is only 

 a little while before the last change of skin that the larvae of the soldiers arid workers can be 

 distinguished. The soldiers are far less numerous than the workers, and their duty would seem to be 

 the protection of the nest, as they make their appearance immediately when, it is injured in any way. 



M. Lespes, in investigating the history of the French Termes lucifugus, was the first to notice the 

 presence in the nests of this species of two forms of so-called " nymphs " (a name here equivalent to 

 pupae), showing traces of wings in two different conditions. Some of these had long, broad wing-cases 

 covering the anterior part of the abdomen (Fig. 5, p. 137) ; these give origin to winged male and female 

 insects which swarm from the nests in May or early in June. The " nymphs of the second form " are 

 less numerous, stouter, and heavier than the preceding (Fig. 4, p. 137), and have short rudiments 

 of wings placed on the sides of the thorax. These were found to continue in the nest after the emergence 

 of the winged insects produced from the first form, but their ultimate fate was only guessed at by M. 

 Lespes. According to Dr. Fritz Miiller, from whose valuable paper on the Termites we have here 

 largely borrowed, these so-called nymphs, of which he recognizes two forms, are really perfect sexual 

 insects, which he names "supplementary" males and females, regarding them as taking the place of 

 the true " king " and " queen " in the event of such individuals failing to reach the nest. The 

 following table given by Dr. Fritz Miiller will make this complex business more intelligible. 



1. Youngest larvae. 



2. Larvae of the asexual forms. 3. Larvae of the sexual forms. 



4. Larvae of the 5. Larvae of the 8. Nymphs of the 9. Nymphs of the 



Soldiers. Workers. first form (Fig. 5). second form (Fig. 4). 



I i I 



6. Soldiers. 7. Workers. 10. Winged animals. 



11; King and Queen. 12. Supplementary 



males and females. 



In proof of the reproductive function of the supplementary females at any rate, Dr. Fritz 

 Miiller records his having found in the central mass of a White Ant's nest, instead of a royal 

 chamber containing a queen and her consort, a series of irregular passages, in which he discovered 

 thirty-one supplementary females crowded together here and there in groups of five or six, and 

 accompanied by a single male, with large black eyes and the stumps of wings that had been 

 fully developed. Abundance of eggs were found in the neighbourhood of this chamber. Dr. 

 Miiller witnessed the production of eggs by the supplementary females, and there was no queen 

 in the nest, and hence, as our author says, instead of a royal palace in which a king was living in 

 decent matrimony with a worthy consort, he had come upon a harem in which a Sultan was 

 disporting himself in the midst of numerous concubines. Considering the immense number of winged 

 individuals which are given off to almost certain destruction by every large community of Termites, 

 and the existence of these wingless reproductive forms, Dr. Fritz Miiller inquires what may be the 

 purpose of such an apparent waste of the energies of the community, and finds it in the doctrine 

 insisted upon with so much cogency by Mr. Darwin, of the advantage of cross -fertilisation to both 

 plants and animals. The flight into the world of the winged individuals will bring the males and 

 females emerging from different nests together, and thus facilitate inter-crossing, and he finds a 

 confirmation of this view in the fact, already observed by LespSs", that the " nymphs of the second 

 form " usually die off some little time after the swarming of the winged individuals, and the probable 

 entrance into the nest of a new royal pair. 



TRIBE CORRODENTIA. 



The name of Corrodentia was given by Burmeister to a group in which lie included the 

 insects next to be described, together with the White Ants, but later entomologists have separated the 

 latter and retained the name for the former types. These insects have membranous wings with few 



