the founders—­kings and queens—­of new communities, the privilege of sex being thus associated with the important and self-denying work of perpetuating the species or race in time.  Sooner or later—­a termite family takes about a year to grow—­a veritable exodus of the young winged termites takes place; and just before this emigration movement occurs, a hive may be seen to be stocked with “termites” of all castes and in all stages of development.  The workers never exhibit a change of form during their growth; the soldiers begin to differ from the workers in the possession of larger heads and jaws; whilst the young which are destined to become the winged males and females are distinguished by the early possession of the germs of wings which become larger as the skin is successively moulted.  Amongst the bees, blind Huber supposed that an ordinary or neuter egg develops into a queen bee if the larva is fed upon a special kind of food—­“royal food,” as it is called.  Although some entomological authorities differ from Huber with regard to the exact means by which the queen bee is reared and specialized from other larvae, yet the opinion thus expressed possesses a large amount of probability.  Whatever may be the exact method or causes through or by which the queen bee is developed, Mr. Bates strongly asserts that the differences between the soldiers and worker termites are distinctly marked from the egg.  This latter observer maintains that the difference is not due to variations in food or treatment during their early existence, but is fixed and apparent from the beginning of development.  This fact is worthy of note, for it argues in favor of the view that if, as is most likely, the differences between the grades of termites may have originally been produced by natural selection or other causes, these differences have now become part and parcel of the constitution of these insects, and are propagated by the ordinary law of heredity.  Thus acquired conditions have become in time the natural “way of life” of these animals.

Mr. Bates has also placed on record the noteworthy fact that a species of termites exists in which the members of the soldier class did not differ at all from the workers “except in the fighting instinct.”  This observation, if it may be used at all in elucidation of the origin of the curious family life of these insects, points not to sudden creation, but to gradual acquirement and modification as having been the method of development of the specialized classes and castes in termite society.  Firstly, we may thus regard the beginnings of the further development of a colony to appear in a nest in which workers and soldiers are alike, as stated by Mr. Bates.  Then, through the practice of the fighting instinct, we may conceive that natural selection would be competent to adapt the soldiers more perfectly for their duties militant, by developing the head and jaws as offensive weapons.  Possibly, were our knowledge of the termites at all