Chap. I. 
WHITE ANTS. 
69 
voluntary, on the part of the insects, I repeatedly tried 
to detach the wings by force, but could never succeed 
whilst they were fresh, for they always tore out by the 
roots. Few escape the innumerable enemies which are 
on the alert at these times to devour them ; ants, 
spiders, lizards, toads, bats, and goat-suckers. The 
waste of life is astonishing. The few that do survive 
pair and become the kings and queens of new colonies. 
I ascertained this by finding single pairs a few days 
after the exodus, which I always examined and proved 
to be males and females, established under a leaf, a 
clod of earth, or wandering about under the edges of 
new tumuli. The females are then not gravid. I once 
found a newly-married pair in a fresh cell tended by a 
few workers. 
The office of Termites in these hot countries is to 
hasten the decomposition of the woody and decaying parts 
of vegetation. In this they perform what in temperate 
latitudes is the task of other orders of insects. Many 
points in their natural history still remain obscure. We 
have seen that there are males and females, which grow, 
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 
deprived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in 
body and mind that they are adapted and impelled to 
