MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 529 



tion of the plan of poisoning with arsenic, which, it is assorted, has met with 

 absolute and unqualified success. The mixture used is prepared by heating 

 four gallons of water to boiling point, and then adding 1 lb. of caustic soda. 

 As soon as this is dissolved, 1 lb. of arsenic is added, after which the liquid is 

 well stirred and boiled for a few minutes, care being taken that the fumes are 

 not inhaled. When required for use, half a gallon of the liquid is added to 

 four gallons of hot or cold water, with 10 lb. of brown sugar, A still better 

 preparation is made by adding half a gallon of the poisonous liquid to five 

 gallons of treacle. Maize-stalks, grass, &c., dipped in the mixture, are placed 

 along the roads and in the fields, and the material can also be splashed with a 

 brush upon anything which the locusts are known to have a liking for. At- 

 tracted by the odour of the sugar or treacle over a distance of as much as 100 

 yards, the locusts will eat of the mixture and die. These are eaten by other 

 locusts, and in a few days' time the ground may become strewn with the dead 

 bodies of the insects. With ordinary care no risk of poisoning any human 

 being is incurred, whilst the small quantity of the material on a piece of grass 

 or maize stalk is said to be insufficient to injure stock of any kind—fowls 

 have been known to feed without injury on the arsenic destroyed locusts. 

 The evidence adduced indicates that " hoppers," however numerous, can be 

 destroyed in a few days, and the crops thus saved from their ravages. 



No. IV.— THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF TERMITES., 

 Though more than a century has elapsed since Smeathman published the 

 first careful account of the Termitidce, but few workers have substantially 

 increased our knowledge of the subject. The reasons for 1 his apparent 

 apathy lie, indeed, on the surface. With few exceptions the Termites are 

 tropical or sub-tropical in habitat ; avoiding light, and living in vast 

 concealed communities, their cryptic manner of life renders the task of 

 observation extremely prolonged and arduous, while the multiplicity of 

 forms in a single species, and the difficulties attending their preservation 

 have earned them little regard from the systematist. 



The first marked advance towards unravelling the complexity of the 

 tertmte community was made by the great naturalist so lately lost to 

 science, Fritz Muller. Following out Lespes' observations on the nymphs he 

 showed that a certain number of Termitidce reach maturity and propagate 

 without leaving the nest or acquiring the imaginal characteristics, and 

 contended that the function of the swarming adults was not that of 

 founding fresh colonies, but of furnishing royal pairs to pre-existing orphaned 

 nests. 



1 " The Constitution and Development of the Society of Termites, &c." By Prof. B. Grassi and 

 Dr. A. Sandias. English translation in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vols. 39 and 40, 

 with five plates. 



