70 
SANTAREM. 
Chap. L 
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 unde- 
veloped females. I thought it a reasonable hypothesis, 
on account of the total absence of intermediate indi- 
viduals 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 observa- 
tions is doubted by competent judges ;*(* if his conclusion 
be true, the biology of Termites is indeed a mystery. 
* Recherclies sur rOrganization et les Moenrs du Termite Lucifuge, 
Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 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 
Avinged soldiers. I always found the beaked individuals to be of 
the fighting caste ; with regard to winged soldiers and other curious 
forms of pupse which have occurred, they are probably either mon- 
strosities, or belong to species having a peculiar mode of develop- 
ment. 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 fiber den Leistungen, &c., der Entomologie, 
1856. p. 6. Hagen, Linnsea Entomologica, 1858, p. 24. 
