THE TERMITES. 207 



life is astonishing. The few that do survive pair and be- 

 come the kings and queens of new colonies. I ascertained 

 this by finding single pairs a few days after the exodus, 

 which I always examined and proved to be males and 

 females, established under a leaf, a clod of earth, or 

 wandering about under the edges of new tumuli. The 

 females are then not gravid. I once found a newly-married 

 pair in a fresh cell tended by a few workers. The office of 

 Termites in these hot countries is to hasten the decomposition 

 of the woody and decaying parts of vegetation. In this 

 they perform what in temperate latitudes is the task of other 

 orders of insects. Many points in their natural history still 

 remain obscure. We have seen that there are males and 

 females, which grow, reach the adult winged state, and pro- 

 pagate their kind like all other insects. Unlike others, 

 however, which are always, each in its own sphere, provided 

 with the means of maintaining their own in the battle of 

 life, these are helpless creatures, which, without external 

 aid, would soon perish, entailing the extinction of their 

 kind. The family to which they belong is therefore provided 

 with other members, not males or females but individuals 

 deprived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in body 

 and mind that they are adapted and impelled to devote their 

 lives for the good of their species. But I have not explained 

 how these neuter individuals, soldiers and workers, come to 

 be distinct castes. This is still a knotty point, which I could 

 do nothing to solve. Neuter bees and ants are known to be 

 undeveloped females. I thought it a reasonable hypothesis, 

 on account of the total absence of intermediate individuals 

 connecting the two forms, that worker and soldier might be 

 in a similar way female and male whose development had 

 been in some way arrested. A French anatomist, however, 

 M. Lespes, believes to have found by dissection imperfect 

 males and females in each of the castes. The correctness of 

 his observation is doubted by competent judges : if his con- 

 clusion be true, the biology of Termites is indeed a mystery. 

 The different forms of which Lespes and Dr. Hagen speak, 

 I could not find in the species observed by me. I found, 

 however, a species whose soldier class did not differ at all, 

 except in the fighting instinct, from the workers." (?) 



