SPECIES INJURIOUS TO WALL PAPER, BOOKS, ETC. 71 



derived from wituessing its nuptial spring tiight, when the small, 

 brownish, ant-like creatures with long glistening white wings emerge 

 from cracks in tlie ground or from crevices in buildings, swarming out 

 sometimes in enormous numbers, so that they may often be swex)t up 

 bj^ the quart. These winged individuals are not the ones which do the 

 damage, however, and are a mere colonizing form. The real depreda- 

 tors are soft-bodied, large-headed, milky- white insects, less than a 

 quarter of an inch in length, which may often be found in numbers 

 under rotting boards or in decaying stumps. These last are the work- 

 ers and soldiers (fig. 31, c and d), and constitute the bulk of the colony 

 for most of the year, the winged migrating forms, consisting of the 

 sexed individuals, appearing normally only once a year, usually in 

 spring or early summer. 



The white ants present, in an entirely distinct order of insects, 

 another of those most curious problems of communal societies which 

 find so many examples among the ants, bees, and wasps. A colony of 

 white ants includes workers, soldiers, the young of the various forms, 

 and, at the proper season of the year, the winged males and females; 

 also a single parent pair, the specially developed king and queen. In 

 the case of the common white ant of this country {Termes Jfavipes), the 

 true fully developed queen or mother of the colony and her consort, 

 the fully developed king or male, have never been found. The soldiers 

 or workers are degraded or undeveloped individuals of both sexes, 

 differing in this respect from ants and bees, in which the workers are 

 all undeveloped females. 



The economy of the termites is almost exactly analogous to that of 

 the ants and bees. The workers attend to all the duties of the colon}', 

 make the excavations, build the nests, care for the young, and protect 

 and minister to the wants of the queen or mother ant. In this they are 

 assisted somewhat by the soldiers, whose duty, however, is also pro- 

 tective, their enormous development of head and jaws indicating their 

 role as the fighters or defenders of the colony. Both the workers and 

 soldiers are blind. The colonizing individuals differ from the others in 

 being fully developed sexually and in possession of very long wings, 

 which normally lie fiat over each other, the upper wings concealing the 

 lower, and both projecting beyond the abdomen. These wings have a 

 very peculiar suture near the base, where they can be readily broken 

 off", leaving mere stumps. At the time of the spring fiight the winged 

 individuals emerge from the colony very rapidly, frequently swarming 

 in clouds out of doors, and after a short fiight fall to the ground and 

 very soon succeed in breaking oft' their long, clumsy'wings at the suture 

 referred to. In this swarming or nuptial fiight they come out in pairs 

 and under f\xvorable conditicms each pair might establish a new colony, 

 but in point of fact this probably rarely if ever happens. They are 

 weak fiyers, clumsy, and not capable of extensive locomotion on foot, 

 and are promptly preyed upon and destroyed by many insectivorous 

 animals, and rarely indeed do any of the individuals escape. 



