1120 The American Naturalist. | December, 
fructificating ingredient of the semen. They are so pale, and 
their form is differentiated so little, that I cannot say with precis- 
ion whether they are found with the winged males. I have until now 
looked in vain in the reproductive organ (semen pocket) of the 
queens, as well as in that of the winged females. If I have 
rightly seen, those with the winged males (the large-ball, nest- 
building Eutermes) already exist, but still enclosed in cells. 
Until now, a couple-of Termites have not been caught in the 
act of fructification (copulation). What may have been taken 
for it are the pleasure walks of the couples, many times ob- 
served, which they take together, the female in front and the 
male close behind, often seizing the hinder body of the female 
with his mandible. These peculiar walks have I seen repeatedly 
with the species Termes lespesü. Of this kind I brought matured 
individuals (imago) out of the nest into a glass. They seemed to 
have the habit, after a short restlessness, to become heaped over 
each other in thick layers, as they had been accustomed to sit 
quietly at the bottom in the chambers of the nest. I poured 
them ona sheet of paper, and they pushed themselves gradually, 
one couple after the other, out of the crowded heap, so as 
to get slowly away from the heap. 
Some couples, however, separated themselves soon again ; 
these were two males, as far as they could be examined. 
The others, which kept together, consisted always of a female in 
front and a close-following male; the latter was up to the hinder 
half of the wing, or in case the wings had been already thrown 
off, completely hidden under the wings of the female. If it was 
sometimes a step backward, the female seemed to wait for it. 
Not seldom had the male really seized for a time, with his man- 
dibles, the point out of the hinder body of his mate (as Rosens- 
_ chold gives, and not apparently, as Lespes saw with Zermes 
lucifugus). It seemed to be a sort of bridal caressing. Of fertil- 
izing I have seen as little as Smeathman, Rosenschold, Lespes, 
Tollin, and others. The object of these pleasure walks is prob- 
ably to find a nest for a new home for their species.” 
? Ménétriés relates, in a curious report of mixed truth and error (Linn. En- 
tomologica, page 116), that th lacie wall ded wiih een 
I believe this statement is doubtful, just as much as that of the Termites of Serra da 
