I03 Indian Museum Notes. [VQI. IY« 



Certain species such as the swallow-tailed Kite, Pigeon hawk, and 

 Burrowing Owl were found to feed almost exclusively on insects 

 (locusts and grasshoppers). Others, such as the marsh hawk, red- 

 shouldered hawk, Swainson's Hawk, Sparrow hawk, Barn Owl and 

 Screech Owl were found to feed very extensively on these insects. 



These data are quite sufficient to show that Owls and the smaller 

 Hawks, besides destroying mice, can be of great service in keeping 

 down certain very destructive insects, and are quite sufficient to 

 encourage the opinion that these birds should be specially protected 

 for this purpose. 



It may also be added that many of the stomachs examined con- 

 tained reptiles, and some of them snakes, including adders. 



ON THE FORMATION OF NEW COLONIES BY 

 Termes litcifugus, 



(Reprint of a translation of report by Perez published in the Annals and Maga- 

 zine of Natural History, 6th Series, Vol. 15, No. 87, 1895, p. 283. The original 

 arti'cle appeared in Comptes Rendus, tome CXIX, No. 19 (Nov. 5, 1894), pp. 804 — 

 806.) 



Although the biology of the European and exotic Termites 

 has engaged the attention of numerous Zoologists, some of whom are 

 of the highest rank, the origin of the societies of these insects still 

 remains enveloped in complete obscurity. Neither de Quatrefages 

 nor Lesp^s has observed the swarms of sexual individuals which 

 at certain periods escape from the galleries, and to which 

 has been attributed the mission of founding new colonies. Fritz 

 Miiller even goes so far as expressly to deny that they perform such 

 a function. He writes as follows : — "As to the males and females of 

 Calotermes, I will not absolutely refuse to admit that they possess 

 the capability of continuing to exist by themselves and of commenc- 

 ing a new settlement. In the case of all species of Termes, 

 Eutermes, and Anoplotermes, however, with whose mode of life I am 

 to some extent acquainted, a winged pair would undertake the 

 foundation of a new colony with precisely the same success as a 

 pair of new-born children deposited upon a desert island." 

 \jenaische Zeitschrift^' Bd. VII, 1873, p. 458, note i). 



In spite of so absolute a denial on the part of the eminent Zoo- 

 logist just quoted, it is, I think, evident that a social species, devoid 

 of the faculty of disseminating itself at a distance, would be doomed 



