We see a perfect adjustment of the numerical strengths of the different. castes, so. that one does not predominate more than it should, all caryled out by the work. ere in' feeding the larve, giving Jarve intended to develop into one caste A certain kind of food and those for another caste another variety of nourishment. We seo the monstrous queen, many thousands of times the size of the workers, being carefully tended, fed, and even tickled in order to assist her her never-ending task of laying eggs—millions upon millions egmt—and when she shows signs of old age and fails to produce. the requisite number of eggs to keep the colony at its maximum strength, we see her abandoned, left. to starve, since she cannot feed her self, and another queen reared in her' place, We sec all_kinds of building! operations in progress: here ex cavations and tunnelling, there the rearing of walls, pillars and domes, Everything is done in the dark, and all the workers are blind. They: appear to abhor light, and. th moment there appears a break, in the outer walls of their home, they hurry to repair it. They build with minute pieces of material, such grains of sand or chewed up wood, all strongly held together powerful cement. excreted by' the insects themselves. They work through the woodwork of houses, eating from within and leaving: only a thin shell, which crumbles a touch, To reach the leaves of certain trees, they build ong galleries up the trunks and trenches, along which they can travel, secure from their foes out side, and only making hurried night forays into the open for the leaves. We find other insects living as pets, so to speak, in the teritary, minute members of the Coceidae, or plant lice, similar to what occurs in the nests of the true ants, though, apparently, not to quite the same advanced degree.
In short, such a wonderful world opens up before us when we break open the cement walls of the ter~ itary, and see all that takes place therein through the eyes of those who have given their time and energy to the observation and recording of this wonderful phenomenon, that we stop dumbfounded to think that all this should be going on in this underground world, Just as if "the termites were men, had man's intelligence, could speak and communicate ideas as he can, beings. could think and reason as human
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.