344 UOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



concerning the species which are found in Africa, Asia, America, 

 and Europe. 



In the first place, the reader must understand that the Termite 

 is not an ant at all, but belongs to a totally difierent order of 

 insect, and is allied to the dragon-flies, the ant-lions, the May-flies,, 

 and the beautiful Lace-wing flies. 



The Termites are social, and, like other social insects, are divided 

 into several grades, such as workers, males, and females, the two 

 latter of which are winged when they reach maturity. The body 

 is oblong and flat, the antennae short, and the mandibles flat- 

 tened and toothed, and in most cases extremely long and for- 

 midable. Each colony is founded by a single pair, popularly 

 called the king and queen, the rest of the population consisting 

 of developed males and females, which are intended to per- 

 petuate the species and foimd fresh colonies, and of undeveloped 

 individuals, or neuters, of both sexes. The neuter males are 

 termed soldiers, and are armed with powerful jaws proceeding 

 from enormous heads, and the neuter females are termed workers, 

 and are very small. 



There are now before me some specimens of African Termites, 

 the soldiers of which are five or six times as large as the 

 workers. They are formidable creatures, but they can do little 

 harm beyond inflicting a severe bite, as they are not furnished 

 with stings nor even with poison glands. They can bite through 

 the clothes of an European, and when they swarm upon the 

 bare limbs of the negro, they inflict almost unbearable tortures. 

 The chief duty of the soldier seems to be the defence of the 

 nest ; for whenever the walls are broken down the soldiers come 

 trooping out to attack the invader, and being quite unconscious 

 of fear, they will seize on the first strange object that happens to 

 come in their way. There are comparatively few soldiers, their 

 proportion to the workers being only one per cent. 



"When a pair of developed Termites have settled themselves to 

 form a colony, they share the fate of certain Oriental potentates, 

 and never move out of their royal cell. When the queen is 

 fairly settled, she increases in size so rapidly, that, even if she 

 were set at liberty, she could not crawl an inch. While the 

 head, thorax, and legs retain their original dimensions, the abdo- 

 men swells until it is more than two inches long and about three 

 quarters of an inch in width. Thus developed, she produces 



