Besume of Recent Scientific Publications. 449 



The Termites described are chiefly those collected by the 

 author in South Africa, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo. 

 Apart from the interest attaching to the description of the new 

 species, which in many cases includes that of the female, male, 

 worker and soldier, the general remarks of the author are of 

 special importance. 



The genus Termes contains numerous species of very diverse 

 forms and habits, yet it cannot be subdivided by characters 

 common to every caste ; the genus Calotermes is as widely 

 distributed as the genus Termes, but has only a tenth as 

 many species. The largest forms of the genus are fungus- 

 growers. There are three Old World groups of fungus- 

 growers. 



The most important is represented by T. bellicosus ; it builds 

 tall mounds. The second is represented by T. vulgaris; it 

 builds insignificantly small mounds or none at all. The last 

 group, represented by T. incertus, has quite different habits 

 from those of the previous groups, building small fungus-beds, 

 generally in the shells of the nests of larger species. The king 

 and queen are not enclosed in a special royal cell. These three 

 typical species occur in South Africa. 



In the genus Termes the soldier is by far the best caste to 

 determine species from : not only is the soldier easier to deter- 

 mine than the male, but it is found in almost every nest, and 

 usually wherever the workers go. The author has not found 

 the characters of the wings very useful or reliable, but there are 

 two external ones which are correlated in the soldiers and the 

 males of the genus Termes ; the abdominal papillae show a 

 corresponding degree of development, and the number of seg- 

 ments of the antennae is approximately in the proportion of 

 eight to nine. Although the segments of the antennae are fewer 

 in the soldier than in the male, they are generally longer and 

 more cylindrical, so that the antennae of the soldiers are often 

 as long as, or longer than, those of the imago. The antennae 

 of the workers, on the other hand, are always much shorter, yet 

 the number of segments which compose them is never less than 

 in the soldier and never more than in the male. " Long 

 antennae go with long legs, no matter what caste or species. 

 Long legs and long antennae go with much walking and fora- 

 ging, and this is true when we look to differences between castes. 

 Soldiers with long, slender legs belong to species which forage 

 for food at a distance from the nest ; soldiers with short, stout 



