INSECTS IN GENERAL. 117 



pei'ity of their community, could only be assured by the 

 establishment of a particular and numerous order of indivi- 

 duals, who should supply the functions of mothers, and who 

 should possess nothing of the character but its sentiments 

 and affections. Nature in forming, in this instance, neuter 

 individuals, was obliged to depart from her usual laws, to 

 ensure the subsistence of her work, and her foresight has 

 modified her resources according to the circumstances in 

 which the beings were to be placed. For example, she has 

 followed a different plan with regard to the termites, the 

 young individuals of which have not this feeble infancy, 

 and differ from those which are adult only by a smaller 

 size, the absence or shortness of the wings, and some other 

 peculiarities of no great importance. Then the neuters, 

 justly called soldiers, have a large head, strong jaws, which 

 act like pincers, and they scarcely compose more than the 

 hundredth part of the population. They simply act the 

 part of videts and defenders. The other individuals, up to 

 the moment in which their organs are entirely developed, re- 

 main exclusively charged with all the internal works. Still 

 delicate and without defence, they have only need to be pre- 

 served from the strong impression of the heat, and from the 

 attacks of such enemies as might introduce themselves into 

 their habitation. In working imder cover, and in subter- 

 ranean galleries, they avoid the first of these dangers, and 

 the armed neuters preserve them against the second, while the 

 society is maintained by this reciprocity of service. An 

 activity common to all the members of the society, is thus the 

 distinguishing characteristic of the termites, which are one of 

 the most terrible agents of destruction in the equatorial coun- 

 tries. As they work only in their infancy, and are at this 

 age deprived of wings, or only possess the rudiments of them, 

 they then very much resemble ants in their habits. But their 

 numbers being far greater, they construct vaster and more 



