116 
NEUROPTERA. 
The conduct of the nest apparently rests with the workers, who 
feed the whole community and who regulate the supply of each class of 
Fig. 48—Termopsis wroughtoni male and soldier ; x 8. 
{From Desneux.) 
individuals. The queen is a helpless individual, whose sole function is 
the production of eggs; she lives in the nest and is usually an immensely 
developed creature with great egg-producing capacities ; to provide 
for fertilised eggs a male is kept. In reserve are immature males and 
females which can be brought on when desired. The perplexing problem 
is how so many individuals are produced from one kind of egg. We meet 
with the same problem in ants and bees, and undoubtedly there is signi¬ 
ficance in the fact that in both cases the food is ‘ ‘artificial,’ ’ it is food 
prepared by the workers and whose composition can be varied ; probably 
they administer different kinds of food to the larvae according as they 
want a particular kind of individual. The food of the whole nest con¬ 
sists of vegetable fibre, chewed up by the workers and partially digested; 
in one species it is stated to be regurgitated from the anterior part of the 
alimentary canal or excreted from the posterior part and is apparently 
in both cases used for food, which probably has very different degrees 
of nutritive value. 
