devote their lives for the good of their species. But I have not explained how these neuter individuals, soldiers and workers, come to be distinct castes. This is still a knotty point, which I could do nothing to solve. Neuter bees and ants are known to be undeveloped females. I thought it a reasonable hypothesis, on account of the total absence of intermediate individuals connecting the two forms, that worker and soldier might be in a similar way female and male whose development had been in some way arrested. A French anatomist, however, M. Lespés,[1] believes to have found by dissection imperfect males and females in each of the castes. The correctness of his observations is doubted by competent judges;[2] if his conclusion be true, the biology of Termites is indeed a mystery.
- ↑ Recherches sur l'Organization et les Mœurs du Termite Lucifuge, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 4me série, tome 5, fasc. 4 et 5. Paris, 1856. M. Lespés states also to have found two distinct forms of pupa in the same species, one only of which he believes to become kings and queens. I observed nothing of the kind in Termes arenarius. Dr. Hagen mentions, in his monograph, cases of beaked workers and winged soldiers. I always found the beaked individuals to be of the fighting caste; with regard to winged soldiers and other curious forms of pupæ which have occurred, they are probably either monstrosities, or belong to species having a peculiar mode of development. I did not meet with such; I found, however, a species whose soldier class did not differ at all, except in the fighting instinct, from the workers.
- ↑ Gerstaecker, Bericht über den Leistungen, &c., der Entomologie, 1856. p. 6. Hagen, Linnæa Entomologica, 1858, p. 24.
