1890.] Contribution to the Knowledge of the Termites. 1 127 
never-swarming (cleistogamic) males and females, which always 
remain locked up in stock, and through which the preservation 
of the species becomes assured, in case the fructification of out- 
swarming males and females, depending on the favor of outside 
conditions, does not take place. 
As the cleistogamic blossoms of many plants are to young 
buds of the opened blossoms, so are the cleistogamic males and 
females of the Termites alike in reproduction to the out- 
swarming. With the plants the leaves of the flowers remain, 
with the Termites the wings remain, in a lower state of develop- 
ment. The lavish production of flower-pollen in open flowers 
corresponds with the lavish production of winged males and 
females; as the limited number of nymphz with short wing 
beginnings to the more scanty pollen of cleistogamic blossoms. 
As the cleistogamic blossoms of the violet unfold to open ones, 
so in Termes lucifugus the nymphz of the second form develop 
later than those of the first form. 
In the foreign Leersia oryzoides in France, fructification has been 
so far only observed to take place by means of cleistogamic blos- 
soms, so until now in the garden in Schönbrun only one cleis- 
togamic female has been found of the Zermes flavipes, prob- 
ably because in both cases, in a strange land, the outside con- 
ditions are not favorable for the usual fructification. 
I had formed this opinion about the nymphz with short wing- 
cases, the same as that in Dr. Hagen’s monograph, from the facts 
there laid down, and stated in letters, long before I had the oppor- 
tunity to see such animals. 
Unfortunately the real kernel of this standpoint lacked the 
real foundation,—the proof failed,—that really cleistogamic males 
and females took charge of the transplanting of the species in 
cases where king and queen failed in stock. 
One will comprehend with what joyful surprise I greeted a 
discovery which allows me now to furnish this proof. 
I had (on the 11th of November) brought home with me the 
firm kernel (of a Eutermes nest), about the size of a hen's egg, 
out of decayed Gissara stump. Around the kernel were heaped 
considerable masses of eggs, and so I expected to find therein, 
Am. Nat.—December.—2. 
