numbers
than the workers, but exceed them greatly in bulk. They have long and very
large heads, armed with powerful mandibles, and are the sentinels and
soldiers of the colony. These neuters are blind. _Fourth_ and _Fifth_, the
males and females. These are the perfect insects, capable of continuing
the species. There is only one each in every separate society. They are
exempted from all labor, and are the common father and mother of the
community.

Termes inhabit tropical countries, and the first establishment of new
colonies takes place in this way: In the evening, at the end of the dry
season, the males and females, having arrived at their perfect state,
emerge from their nest in countless thousands. They have two pairs of
wings, and with their aid mount immediately into the air. The next
morning they are found covering the ground, and deprived of their wings.
They then mate. Scarcely a single pair in many millions escape their
enemies--birds, reptiles, beasts, fishes, insects, especially the other
ants, and even man himself. The workers, which are continually prowling
about their covered ways, occasionally meet one of these pairs. They
immediately salute them, render them homage, and elect them father and
mother of a new colony. All other pairs not so fortunate perish.

As soon as they are chosen king and queen, or rather, father and mother,
they are conducted into the nest, where the workers build around them a
suitable cell, the entrances to which are large enough for themselves
and the neuters or soldiers to pass through, but too small for the royal
pair. Thus they remain in prison as long as they live. They are
furnished with every delicacy, but are never allowed to leave their
prison. The female soon begins to oviposit--the eggs, as fast as they
are dropped, being carried away into the nurseries by the workers. As
the queen increases in dimensions, they keep enlarging the cell in which
she is confined. Her abdomen begins to extend until it is two thousand
times the size of the rest of the body, and her bulk equals that of
twenty thousand workers. She becomes one vast matrix of eggs. I once saw
a queen which measured three and one quarter inches from one extremity
of her body to the other. There is continual oviposition, the queen
laying over eighty thousand eggs in twenty-four hours, or one egg every
second. As these females live about two years, they will lay some sixty
million eggs.

In the royal cell ther