298 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
L 
PRETO 
Photo by H#’. P, Dando, F.Z.S. 
defend the nest when attacked. 
QUEEN TERMITE 
Her huge white body is full of eggs, of which 
she lays thousands every day 
two entrances, one above the other, so that the insect can 
pass in and out with perfect ease. 
The May-fly is also remarkable for the fact that the 
perfect insect changes its skin shortly after reaching maturity. 
Before this change takes place the female insect is the 
“Green Drake” of the angler; afterwards, the ‘ Grey Drake.” 
To this group belong also the TERMITES, or “ White 
Ants,” so exceedingly numerous in almost all the warmer 
parts of the world. These are social insects, living together 
in vast colonies, and making most wonderful nests, which 
consist of a vast and complicated series of chambers and 
passages, sheltered beneath a turreted dome of clay. In 
the centre is the ‘royal cell,’ inhabited by the “king” 
and “ queen,” as the perfect male and female are called. 
These are winged when first they leave the pupal shell. 
But after taking a single flight, they snap off their wings. 
at the base, just as ants do; while for the rest of their 
lives they are absolute prisoners in the cell built around 
them by the workers. 
Shortly after this strange incarceration takes place, the 
body of the queen swells to a huge size, so that, to quote 
Professor Drummond, she becomes ‘a large, loathsome, 
cylindrical package, 2 or 3 inches long, in shape like a 
sausage, and as white as a bolster.” She now begins to 
deposit eggs at the rate of several thousands in a day, 
which are at once carried off by the workers, to whom is. 
entrusted the entire care of the helpless young. These 
workers, which are exceedingly numerous, also enlarge the 
nest from time to time, and construct tunnels of clay up the 
trunks and along the branches of trees, through which they 
may convey to the nurseries in security the gums and 
decaying wood for the nutriment of the young. 
A fourth form of insect is also found in the termites’ 
nest, known as the “ Soldier.” The head is much larger 
and the jaws are much longer and_ stronger than those 
of the worker, and the sole function appears to be to 
Both soldier and worker, apparently, proceed from the 
same eggs which produce the king and queen, the difference in development being probably 
due —as in the hive-bee — to the character of the food with which the young are supplied. 
ie 
Photo by HW’, P. Danao, F.Z.S. 
TERMITES 
The perfect male and female are winged, the “worker? and the ** soldier? being more like grubs than perfect insects 
