ORDER ISOPTERA 251 



Besides workers and soldiers and the royal parents, the 

 colony also contains a great number of larvcB in all stages of 

 development — the issue of the queen. Many of these, of 

 course, are destined to become workers and soldiers ; but a 

 great number of them develop into sexually mature winged 

 males arxd females, and these periodically leave the colony in 

 prodigious streams. In India the flights usually occur about 

 sunset, in the early part of the rainy season. The great 

 majority of these winged individuals perish at once, being 

 devoured by the multitude of birds and bats that are waiting 

 on them. As to those that do not immediately perish, 

 beyond the fact that they soon alight and cast their wings, 

 the fate is problematical. Some are devoured by lizards, etc. 

 Some, it is said, may, if they happen to fall near their own 

 parent colony, be captured by wandering workers and be 

 carried off forthwith to become royalties in a new colony, or 

 even in the colony which they have just left. It is also said 

 that males and females may couple and may form the nuclei 

 of new colonies without any assistance from chance workers, 

 and it is only reasonable to suppose that, in nature, new 

 colonies must sometimes originate in this way. In the case 

 of a common Calcutta species I have several times taken a 

 coupled ipair and have kept them in suitable surroundings, 

 but have never succeeded in raising the beginnings of a 

 colony from them, though this has been done by another 

 observer elsewhere, and has, on the other hand, been scouted 

 as an impossibility by Fritz Miiller. 



With some species of termites there occur other castes of 

 sexually arrested individuals, in addition to ordinary workers 

 and ordinary soldiers ; and in some cases a certain number 

 of larvae are kept in such a condition that by appropriate 

 treatment (probably by special feeding) their reproductive 

 organs may develop if anything should befall the royal 

 parents. Such larvae while still in the potential stage are 

 known as reserz'e royalties, and when they become functional, 

 as substitution royalties. 



Termites keep their nests and galleries very clean ; the 

 cast skins and the dead are eaten ; even the excrement is 

 made use of, being eaten until its nutriment is exhausted and 

 then worked into plaster for the galleries. The young 



