ISOPTERA. 
97 
wanderers and provide them with food, and with shelter 
in the shape of a large circular shallow cell. In this they 
are really imprisoned, but are well cared 
for. Soon the queen or mother begins 
to develop eggs, and her body grows 
enormously. Finally, it is nothing but 
a huge sac filled with eggs, looking more 
like a potato than anything else, and is 
sometimes six or seven inches long (Fig. 
106). Of course the poor queen cannot 
move herself in the least, and if she were 
not fed would soon starve; but her king 
remains devoted to her, and her ladies 
and gentlemen in waiting do their best 
to make her comfortable: they carry 
away the eggs to other chambers as soon 
as they are laid, then care for the eggs, and 
feed the little ones when they are hatched. Fic Io6 ._ Quee[1 white . 
The young termites are active, and re- ant> T * rmes gtivus. 
semble the adult in form. If a nest becomes queenless, and 
the workers are unable to procure a queen, there are de¬ 
veloped in the nest wingless sexual individuals, which are 
termed complemental males and females. But as each com- 
plemental female lays only a few eggs, it requires several to 
take the place of a real queen. 
All White-ants are miners, and avoid the light. They 
build covered-ways wherever they wish to go. In hot 
countries they are a terrible pest, as they feed upon wood, 
and actually destroy buildings and furniture and libraries. 
They leave merely the outside portion of what they feed 
upon ; and they have been known to enter a table through 
the bottom of the legs and to eat all the inner portions so 
that a slight weight crushed it to the floor. In Florida they 
do damage to orange and other trees by girdling them below 
the surface of the ground. 
8 
