Chap. I. 
WHITE ANTS. 
63 
wings to enable them to issue forth and disseminate 
their kind. The workers and soldiers are wingless, and 
differ solely in the shape and armature of the head. 
This member in the labourers is smooth and rounded, 
the mouth being adapted for the working of the mate- 
rials in building the hive ; in the soldiers the head is 
of very large size, and is provided in almost every kind 
with special organs of offence or defence in the form 
of horny processes resembling pikes, tridents, and so 
forth. Some species do not possess these extraordi- 
nary projections, but have, in compensation, greatly 
lengthened jaws, which are shaped in some kinds as 
sickles, in others as sabres and saws. 
The course of human events in our day seems, 
unhappily, to make it more than ever necessary for the 
citizens of civilised and industrious communities to set 
apart a numerous armed class for the protection of the 
rest ; in this nations only do what nature has of old 
done for the Termites. The soldier Termes, however, 
has not only the fighting instinct and function ; he is 
constructed as a soldier, and carries his weapons not in 
his hand, but growing out of his body. 
Whenever a colony of Termites is disturbed, the 
workers are at first the only members of the com- 
munity seen ; these quickly disappear through the 
endless ramified galleries of which a Termitarium is 
composed, and soldiers make their appearance. The 
observations of Smeathman on the soldiers of a species 
inhabiting tropical Africa are often quoted in books on 
Natural History, and give a very good idea of their 
habits. I was always amused at the pugnacity dis- 
