SOCIAL INSECTS 



123 



may be well excused for sometimes doing a little private 

 slaughter among their healthy relatives, as they are said to be 

 apt to do when excited. It is on the whole a good thing that 

 human social life has evolved on rather different lines, in spite 

 of the horrors of war and other matters which an intelligent 

 Termite would deprecate. 



Winged queens and kings swarm from the nest at certain 

 seasons of the year, and any pair fortunate enough to escape 

 the appetites of birds or other foes is capable of starting a fresh 

 society. 



The Light - shunning Termite 

 (Termes lucifugus) is the second and 

 only other European species. A 

 society consists of many thousands of 

 individuals, and there are workers as 

 well as soldiers. Winged queens and 

 kings swarm from the nest as in other 

 cases, but in Sicily these all perish, so 

 far as yet known. It seems probable, 

 however, that the existing societies 

 there were founded in the first in- 

 stance by royal pairs, though Grassi 

 has never found these in any of the 

 very numerous Sicilian nests he has 

 examined. In France, however, the 

 investigations of Ferris and Perez 



show that in that country communities can be founded in the 

 usual way. Since fresh individuals are constantly being produced 

 in the Sicilian nests, we naturally enquire how this is possible in 

 the absence of true queens and kings, i.e. termites which at one 

 time possessed wings and were fully adult. The answer is found 

 in the existence of remarkable castes which may be termed " sub- 

 stitution royalties ". Here, as in other species with complex social 

 life, the workers seem to be aware of the necessity for continued 

 egg-production, and appear to feed some of the nymphs in such 

 a way that they become capable of continuing their kind, though 

 wings are not developed, and certain immature characters are 

 retained. The substitution queens and kings are not all alike, 

 as may be gathered to some extent from fig. 1099. Even this 

 apology for a king is rarely found in a nest, a possible explana- 



Fig. 1099. Light-Shunning Termite (Termes 

 lucifugus}. A, Young larva; B, adult worker; 

 c, soldier; D, winged adult; K and F, reserve 

 or substitution queens. Actual sizes indicated 

 by the vertical lines. 



