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reach the adult winged state, and propagate their kind 

 like all other insects. Unlike others, however, which 

 are always, each in its sphere, provided with the means 

 of maintaining their own in the battle of life, these are 

 helpless creatures, which, without external aid, would 

 soon perish, entailing the extinction of their kind. The 

 family to which they belong is therefore provided with 

 other members, not males or females, but individuals de- 

 prived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in body 

 and mind that they are adapted and impelled to devote 

 their lives for the good of their species. But I have not 

 explained how these neuter individuals, soldiers and 

 workers, come to be distinct castes. This is still a knotty 

 point, which I could do nothing to solve. Neuter bees 

 and ants are known to be undeveloped females. I thought 

 it a reasonable hypothesis, on account of the total absence 

 of intermediate individuals connecting the two forms, 

 that worker and soldier might be in a similar way female 

 and male whose development had been in some way 

 arrested. A French anatomist, however, M. Lespes^, 

 believes to have found by dissection imperfect males and 

 females in each of the castes. The correctness of his 

 observations is doubted by competent judges ^ ; if his 

 conclusion be true, the biology of Termites is indeed a 

 mystery. 



^ Recherches sur V Organisation et les Mceurs dti Termite 

 Lucifuge, Annates des Sciences Natureltes^ 4°™® serie, tome 5, 

 fasc. 4 et 5. Paris, 1856. M. Lespes states also to have found 

 two distinct forms of pupa in the same species, one only of 

 which he believes to become kings and queens. I observed 

 nothing of the kind in Termes arenarius. Dr. Hagen mentions, 

 in his monograph, cases of beaked workers and winged soldiers. 

 I always found the beaked individuals to be of the fighting 

 caste ; with regard to winged soldiers and other curious forms 

 of pupae which have occurred, they are probably cither mon- 

 strosities, or belong to species having a peculiar mode of 

 development. I did not meet with such ; I found, however, 

 a species whose soldier class did not differ at all, except in 

 the fighting instinct, from the workers. 



^ Gerstaecker, Bericht iiber den Leistungen, dfc, der En- 

 tofnoiogie^ 1856, p. 6. Hagen, Linncea Entoniologica, 1858, 

 p. 24. 



