THE TERMITES. 203 



tion. What a strange spectacle is offered to us in the 

 organisation of these insect communities ! Nothing analogous 

 occurs among the higher animals. Social instincts exist in 

 many species of mammals and birds, where numerous indi- 

 viduals unite to build common habitations, as we see in the 

 case of weaver-birds and beavers ; but the principle of division 

 of labor, the setting -apart of classes of individuals for 

 certain employments, occurs only in human societies in an 

 advanced state of civilisation. In all the higher animals 

 there are only two orders of individuals as far as bodily 

 structure is concerned, namely, males and females. The 

 wonderful part in the history of the Termites is, that not 

 only is there a rigid division of labor, but nature has given 

 to each class a structure of body adapting it to the kind of 

 labor it has to perform. The males and females form a 

 class apart ; they do no kind of work, but in the course 

 of growth acquire wings to enable them to issue forth 

 and disseminate their kind. The workers and soldiers are 

 wingless, and differ solely in the shape and armature 

 of the head. This member in the laborers is smooth and 

 rounded, the mouth being adapted for the working of the 

 materials in building the hive ; in the soldiers the head is of 

 very large size, and is provided in almost every kind with 

 special organs of offence or defence in the form of horny 

 processes resembling pikes, tridents, and so forth. Some 

 species do not possess these extraordinary projections, but 

 have, in compensation, greatly lengthened jaws, which are 

 shaped in some kinds as sickles, in others as sabres and 

 saws. The course of human events in our day seems, 

 unhappily, to make it more than ever necessary for the 

 citizens of civilised and industrious communities to set apart 

 a numerous armed class for the protection of the rest ; in 

 this nations only do what nature has of old done for the 

 Termites. The soldier Termes, however, has not only the 

 fighting instinct and function ; he is constructed as a soldier, 

 and carries his weapons not in his hand, but growing out of 

 his body. Whenever a colony of Termites is disturbed, the 

 workers are at first the only members of the community 

 seen ; these quickly disappear through the endless ramified 

 galleries of which a Termitarium is composed, and soldiers 

 make their appearance. The observations of Smeathman 

 on the soldiers of a species inhabiting tropical Africa are 



