1878.] ; 123 [Hagen. 
embryos in every ‘stage of development, and propose later to give 
some details. There are about a dozen queens before me, 25 to 20 
mm. in length; with one were also in the same cell two males and two 
females, all wingless, but the abdomen not yet swollen. 
Concerning the curious form of the nympha with short wing cases, 
only covering the first two dorsal segments, instead of five as in the 
ordinary nympha, I found only two, one male and one female among 
the thirty sent by Mr. Hubbard, and collected in the same nest April 
13, when the swarming had begun. In a lot of E. Ripperti col- 
ected by Osten Sacken in February, there were only six nymphae 
with short wing cases, and none of the common form with long wing 
eases. This fact agrees very well with Miiller’s opinion, that the 
short winged ones are supplementary queens, only used when no 
others are present. He observed the laying of eggs by such 
nymphae. 
A most remarkable discovery by Mr. Hubbard is that the young 
are fed upon prepared food, which is stored up in the form of very 
hard and touch rounded masses, evidently composed of comminuted 
wood. ‘These masses, varying in size from small grains to lumps 
larger than a man’s head, are loose and without any connection in 
the middle of the nest, and are hollowed out by the young termites 
from the under side. The masses are yellowish, of very fine struc- 
ture, like some conféctionery, and are so light that one lump nine 
centimetres long and four and a half broad weighs only two and a 
quarter ounces. As Mr. Hubbard states that some nests contain 
many pounds weight of them, it can be understood how large the 
amount is of such masses prepared for the progeny. Prof. Hill has 
kindJy made for me a chemical examination which proves that in 100 
parts they contain only 1.91 ash, (inorganic matter) when dried at 
120° degrees, and 9.79 water. Therefore the organic matter is 88.31 
parts. These lumps float in water, while the other parts of the nest 
donot. The substance of the nest contains 11.8 water; 17.1 inor- 
ganic matter, and 71 organic vegetable matter. Therefore the lumps 
show a marked excess of organic matter. 
Besides these lumps there is prepared for the young white ants 
another kind of food, probably for the first period of their life. 
Among the eggs was found a large number of very small and very hard 
round bodies, recognized by Prof. Farlow as the selerotium of a 
funcus. Some of them were apparently just ready to burst and pro- 
duce the fungus. I should state that I do not know of a similar pro- 
