Yet all is accomplished without any of the aids that have helped man to attain to his high state of Social organization. There is not even a ruler in the true sense of the word, since the kings and queens of the termitary are amongst its) most helpless inmates, mere breeding machines, unable to fend for themselves and utterly unable to give an order or direct any of the activities of the colony. When it is necessary that a thing should done, the inmates, or those of them whose function it is to do it, do what is necessary by common impulse, almost, as it were, automatically. Yet that it cannot be a purely automatic thing is proved by the fact that new, and hitherto unexperienced conditions, readily are dealt with by the devising of new methods. Here, then, is a puzzle indeed—a million individuals carrying on complex existence in one immense colony, each functioning. according to its caste and sot duties, all ready to meet any omerkaney. that may come along, even such as hava never before been experienced, and yot no visible or otherwise discernible gute, loader, instructor or master, Even om own bodies. of which we are so proud, with their many differentiated cells and tissues each performing its allotted task, are better off, since one group of celly has been differentiated to form the brain, which is a sort of clearing-house for all impulses or instruetions—stimali—reeeived oF sent along the nerves. To a large extent our bodies are guided and governed by the brain, but not irely, and here we lay our finger upon the solution of the spirit of the termitary, the genius of the white ant.
'A great many functions are per formed by the different celle of our body without any reference what-sever to our brain: that is to say, without our brain being in any way conscious of it, although it may be that there is an automatic system working through the nerves and the brain to set various actions or reactions in motion. In the main, and so far as we are able to tell, most of these reactions fare set in motion as a response to external stimuli. Thus the- digestive cells secret the necessary fluid {in response to the stimulus caused by the presence of some foreign matter in the stomach; the tear glands emit fluid when the eyeball or inside of the eyelid are stimulate ed; the phagoeites, or white blood corpuscles, move to any part of the body where poisonous germs have deen introduced, and so on. The same tort of thing undoubtedly takes place in the termitary, and may be suggested that we come nearer to understanding the problem of the white ant if we view each termitary or colony individual, rather than the duals that go to make it up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.