SOCIAL INSECTS 121 
glands or stings. But the jaws of the individuals which do the 
work of the community are very powerful, as in Ants. Most 
species shun the light and are pale in colour (hence the name 
“White” Ants), and in such cases only the kings and queens 
possess eyes, the other castes being blind. There are, however, 
leaf-cutting Termites in South Africa which move about in open 
daylight. Eyes are here present in all castes. There is no 
marked metamorphosis, for the young do not hatch out of the 
egg as helpless grubs, but as active nymphs, which attain their 
full size after several moults. The number of castes varies 
greatly in the different species, and matters are complicated by 
the presence of nymphs in various stages of development. But 
in all cases which have been investigated the just-hatched nymphs 
are to all appearance alike, and it is probable that their subse- 
quent fate depends upon the nature of the food, the matter being 
more or less regulated by the mature inhabitants of the nest. 
The same thing is, indeed, largely true for social Bees and 
Wasps. In the Honey-Bee, for example, the grubs destined to 
become queens are fed differently from their fellows. 
Only the fully mature queens and kings (as the full-blown 
males are here usually termed) are provided with wings, both 
pairs being of equal size, the arrangement of veins being quite 
unlike that characteristic of Bees and Wasps, as might be antici- 
pated from the fact that Termites belong to an entirely different 
order. Near the base of each wing there is a weak place, facili- 
tating detachment after the first and only flight has taken place. 
Queens and kings swarm from the nest much as in Ants, and 
associate themselves in pairs. The vast majority fall a victim to 
insectivorous birds and other animals, but enough survive to 
secure the formation of fresh societies, at least in some cases. 
Nor do we find that speedy death is the necessary sequel to 
mating for a king termite, as in the case of drone bees, for a 
nest commonly contains, in some species at any rate, a royal 
couple, both of whom are carefully tended for the term of their 
natural lives. Of other kinds of individual, soldiers are always 
found and generally workers, some of both these castes being 
modified females and others modified males. A Termite society 
is not, like those of Bees and Wasps, a female republic. 
The only two known species of European Termite have been 
carefully studied, in Sicily, by Grassi and Sandias, whose chief 
