Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/230

 not shed by the roots, for a small portion of the stumps remained attached to the thorax. The edge of the fracture was in all cases straight, not ruptured: there is, in fact, a natural seam crossing the member towards its root, and at this point the long wing naturally drops or is jerked off when the insect has no further use for it. The white ant is endowed with wings simply for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or other colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate its kind. The winged individuals are males and females, whilst the great bulk of their wingless fraternity are of no sex, and are restricted to the functions of building the nests, nursing and defending the young brood. The two sexes mate whilst on the ground after the wings are shed, and then the married couples, if they escape the numerous enemies which lie in wait for them, proceed to the task of founding new colonies. Ants and white ants have much that is analogous in their modes of life: they belong, however, to two widely different orders of insects, strongly contrasted in their structure and manner of growth. In some respects the termites are more wonderful than the ants, but I shall reserve an account of them for another chapter.

I amassed at Caripí a very large collection of beautiful and curious insects, amounting altogether to about twelve hundred species. The number of Coleoptera was remarkable, seeing that this order is so poorly represented near Pará. I attributed their abundance to the number of new clearings made in the virgin forest by the native settlers. The felled timber attracts ligni-