476 DR JOHN ALEXANDER SMITH ON CALAMOICHTHYS 



showing intervening spaces of white skin in some specimens, and these bands are 

 separated on each side, from those of a similar character on the under surface of 

 the abdomen, by a longitudinal space of white skin, which extends along the whole 

 length of the abdomen. This arrangement allows for the wonderful expansion 

 and development of the abdomen in the gravid female. The plates on the under 

 surface of the abdomen are white in the middle of each plate, and become blackish 

 only towards their extremities. 



The antennae in all these different creatures are moniliform and rather short, 

 consisting apparently of fourteen small, rounded, dark-coloured, and hairy joints 

 or divisions ; they are paler in the soldier, and nearly white in the pupae. 



The presence of these various insects, in the different stages of their trans- 

 formation, found in the stomach of the fish at the same time, is interesting as 

 showing that numbers of them must undergo these changes, at different periods 

 of time or in succession, in the same nest. 



Termites from the stomach of the Calamoichthys calabaricus, Old Calabar Eiver. — 1. The Labourer ; 

 2. The Soldier ; 3. The Pupa ; 4. The Perfect Insect. 



The Termites, it has been said, furnish a regular supply of delicious food not 

 only to other insects, to reptiles, to birds and beasts, and even to man himself, 

 who eats the perfect insects at least, of a larger species than the one just described ; 

 but the finny tribes, as represented by our ganoid, seem also to come in for a 

 share of these savoury and most abundant insects. 



It is easy to understand how the winged flies should become the prey of fish, 

 as vast quantities of them are said at certain seasons of the year, as at the begin- 

 ning of the rains, to be spread over the whole face both of the land and water ; 

 but it is not quite so easy to see how the other wingless and less perfectly de- 

 veloped insects should come within the range of the feeding-grounds of the fish. 

 Either their under-ground galleries, which spread out in every direction from their 

 wonderfully- constructed castles, may have been accidentally broken open at the 

 river's banks, and their teeming population poured forth ; or more probably, the 

 heavy tropical rains may have washed them from their broken galleries into the 

 river's bed. 



I took these specimens of Termites to the British Museum, but was not 



