1126 The American Naturalist. [December, 
males and females would lead to the most narrow and limited mar- 
rying into the same family. During the out-swarming the males 
and females of different colonies can find each other, whose union 
here, as elsewhere, will produce a stronger offspring. 
With the numerous exterminations, through diverse enemies, 
which the Termites undergo while swarming, it will occur that a 
colony is not able to fill its throne in due time with a new royal 
pair, in spite of their infinite number. In this case of need 
nympha-like males and females, safely kept in the nest, step in as 
substitutes, and save the colony from becoming extinguished. 
From the circumstance, that only then these reserved males and 
females become necessary, if no real royal pair has been found 
after the close of the swarming time, the delayed developments of 
the nymphae of the second form may be explained. Lespes 
reports that these nymphz of the second form always become 
more rare the nearer the time of their changing approaches (only 
supposed, not observed). Dr. Hagen reports of the work of 
Lespes (12, page 317, and other places), that it would be certainly 
highly strange if the same really changed into winged animals for 
a second swarming. 
It seems comprehensible that they are gradually allowed to die 
out by starvation when not needed, or that only so many are 
kept alive as are necessary. In a surprising way these conditions 
exist alike in the Termites as in the plants of the most different 
amilies, in the observed facts of closed blossoms (cleistogami 
Kuhn) 
As there develop on certain plants, besides open ones, the 
cross-fertilizing blossoms of different plants, so others are 
found developed which never open themselves (cleistogama), of 
which the stamens and pistils always remain enclosed, and by 
which the preservation of the species becomes assured in case the 
fructification depending on outside conditions does not take place 
through open blossoms. 
In the same way certain Termite colonies develop beside the 
out-swarming and crossing of different colonies, through other 
* Compare Hildebrand, The Distribution of Sexes in Plants, 1867, page 73. Severin 
Axell, Fanerogama Vaxternas Fructifij, 1869, pages 10 to 76. 
