and soldiers are wingless, and
differ solely in the shape and armature of the head. This member in
the laborers is smooth and rounded, the mouth being adapted for the
working of the materials in building the hive. In the soldier the head
is of very large size, and is provided in almost every kind with
special organs of offence and defence in the form of horny processes
resembling pikes, tridents, and so forth.... The course of human
events in our day seems, unhappily, to make it more than ever
necessary for the citizens of civilized and industrious communities to
set apart a numerous armed class for the protection of the rest; in
this, nations only do what nature has of old done for the termites.
The soldier termite, however, has not only the fighting instinct and
function; he is constructed as a soldier, and carries his weapons not
in his hand but growing out of his body." When a colony of termites is
disturbed, the ordinary citizens disappear and the military are called
out. "The soldiers mounted the breach," says Mr. Bates, "to cover the
retreat of the workers," when a hole was made in the archway of one
of their covered roads, and with military precision the rearmen fall
into the vacant places in the front ranks as the latter are emptied by
the misfortune of war.

[Illustration: FIG. 2. THE QUEEN ANT; AND THE WORKERS CARRYING AWAY
THE EGGS.]

In a termite colony there is but one king and queen, the royal couple
being the true parents of the colony. The state-apartments are
situated in the centre of the hive, and are strictly guarded by
workers. Both king and queen are wingless, and are of larger size than
their subjects. The queen engages in a continual round of maternal
duties, the eggs deposited by the sovereign-mother being at once
seized by the workers and conveyed to special or "nursery cells,"
where the young are duly tended and brought up. Once a year, at the
beginning of the rainy season, winged termites appear in the hive as
developments of certain of the eggs laid by the queen-termite. These
latter are winged males and females (Fig. 1, 1), the two sexes being
present in equal numbers. Some of these, after shedding their wings,
become the founders--kings and queens--of new communities, the
privilege of sex being thus associated with the important and
self-denying work of perpetuating the species or race in time. Sooner
or later--a termite family takes about a year to grow--a veritable
exodus of the young