SOCIAL INSECTS 121 



glands or stings. But the jaws of the individuals which do the 

 work of the community are very powerful, as in Ants. Most 

 species shun the light and are pale in colour (hence the name 

 " White " Ants), and in such cases only the kings and queens 

 possess eyes, the other castes being blind. There are, however, 

 leaf-cutting Termites in South Africa which move about in open 

 daylight. Eyes are here present in all castes. There is no 

 marked metamorphosis, for the young do not hatch out of the 

 egg as helpless grubs, but as active nymphs, which attain their 

 full size after several moults. The number of castes varies 

 greatly in the different species, and matters are complicated by 

 the presence of nymphs in various stages of development. But 

 in all cases which have been investigated the just-hatched nymphs 

 are to all appearance alike, and it is probable that their subse- 

 quent fate depends upon the nature of the food, the matter being 

 more or less regulated by the mature inhabitants of the nest. 

 The same thing is, indeed, largely true for social Bees and 

 Wasps. In the Honey- Bee, for example, the grubs destined to 

 become queens are fed differently from their fellows. 



Only the fully mature queens and kings (as the full-blown 

 males are here usually termed) are provided with wings, both 

 pairs being of equal size, the arrangement of veins being quite 

 unlike that characteristic of Bees and Wasps, as might be antici- 

 pated from the fact that Termites belong to an entirely different 

 order. Near the base of each wing there is a weak place, facili- 

 tating detachment after the first and only flight has taken place. 

 Queens and kings swarm from the nest much as in Ants, and 

 associate themselves in pairs. The vast majority fall a victim to 

 insectivorous birds and other animals, but enough survive to 

 secure the formation of fresh societies, at least in some cases. 

 Nor do we find that speedy death is the necessary sequel to 

 mating for a king termite, as in the case of drone bees, for a 

 nest commonly contains, in some species at any rate, a royal 

 couple, both of whom are carefully tended for the term of their 

 natural lives. Of other kinds of individual, soldiers are always 

 found and generally workers, some of both these castes being 

 modified females and others modified males. A Termite society 

 is not, like those of Bees and Wasps, a female republic. 



The only two known species of European Termite have been 

 carefully studied, in Sicily, by Grassi and Sandias, whose chief 



