Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/83

 voluntary, on the part of the insects, I repeatedly tried to detach the wings by force, but could never succeed whilst they were fresh, for they always tore out by the roots. Few escape the innumerable enemies which are on the alert at these times to devour them; ants, spiders, lizards, toads, bats, and goat-suckers. The waste of life is astonishing. The few that do survive pair and become the kings and queens of new colonies. I ascertained this by finding single pairs a few days after the exodus, which I always examined and proved to be males and females, established under a leaf, a clod of earth, or wandering about under the edges of new tumuli. The females are then not gravid. I once found a newly-married pair in a fresh cell tended by a few workers.

The office of Termites in these hot countries is to hasten the decomposition of the woody and decaying parts of vegetation. In this they perform what in temperate latitudes is the task of other orders of insects. Many points in their natural history still remain obscure. We have seen that there are males and females, which grow, reach the adult winged state, and propagate their kind like all other insects. Unlike others, however, which are always, each in its sphere, provided with the means of maintaining their own in the battle of life, these are helpless creatures, which, without external aid, would soon perish, entailing the extinction of their kind. The family to which they belong is therefore provided with other members, not males or females, but individuals deprived of the sexual instincts, and so endowed in body and mind that they are adapted and impelled to