and a singular spectacle it is to see from twelve to forty thousand bees thus conglomerated in a living

Swarm of 40,000 bees on a branch of fig-tree, with Réaumur's apparatus for weighing them, and computing their number.

CHAPTER XII.

GOVERNMENT OF INSECT COMMUNITIES

THE points of analogy between the forms of human and of insect government are much fewer and slighter than they have been represented by fanciful and inaccurate writers; for, among the termites, the ants, the wasps, and the bees, though we find their associations denominated monarchies and republics, they exhibit but little of what is usually understood by those terms, though the bonds of union arising from mutual assistance and protection are much the same. The chief coincidences which appear obvious are between the insect communities and certain very artificial and unnatural forms of society among mankind. Thus the great importance of the division of labour, as an instrument of civilizing men in a savage state, probably gave rise to the institution of castes in India and in ancient Egypt*, and to the singular military state of Sparta, which bears the nearest resemblance to insect communities of any other on record. Some ancient legislators, indeed, carried into rigid practice the doctrine maintained by some modern visionaries, that all men at birth are equal in faculties; and therefore, like a piece of clay, of which a potter can make " one vessel to honour and another to dishonour," men might be moulded at the will of their instructors into priests, soldiers, herdsmen, agriculturists, or artisans, as in Egypt, according to Diodorus; or into philosophers, cultivators, herdsmen, *Herodotus, ii. and iii.; Diod. Sic. i.; and Strabo, xvii.

merchants, warriors, overseers, or counsellors, as in India, according to Arrian.

Though this doctrine, however, as far as regards mankind, is contrary to universal observation, it is strictly true in the case of social insects, which, as soon as they arrive at maturity, are invariably endowed with the same powers, unimprovable also, so far as we are aware, by any mode of management or of instruction. A spider, the moment it issues from the maternal nest, can spin a web as neatly as it can ever afterwards do during the experience of a long life; and we have just been observing a worker ant (Myrmica rubra) which had begun to move about for the first time, and still wore the pale hue peculiar to this species in infancy, set to work in removing rubbish and assisting to place the pupæ of the formicary with as much dexterity and skill as its old, experienced, dark-coloured compatriots *.

Human society is united chiefly by the bonds of mutual protection and assistance, the latter leading to the multifarious arrangements of the divisions of labour; but in the case of insects, as has been well remarked by Kirby and Spence, the great end being the multiplication of the species, "Providence has employed extraordinary means to secure the fulfilment of this object, by creating a particular order of individuals in each society, which, freed from sexual pursuits, may give themselves wholly to labour, and thus absolve the females from every employment but that of furnishing the society from time to time with a sufficient supply of eggs to keep up the population to its proper standard t." Yet it is proper to repeat, that notwithstanding all which has hitherto been discovered respecting social insects, we are still much in the dark as to many important points. "The more I am engaged," says Bonnet, † Intr. ii. 30.

* J. R.

"in making fresh observations upon bees, the more firm is my conviction, that the time is not yet arrived in which we can draw satisfactory conclusions respecting their policy. It is only by varying and combining experiments in a thousand ways, and by placing these industrious flies in circumstances more or less removed from their ordinary state, that we can hope to ascertain the right direction of their instinct, and the true principles of their government*." What we have to state, therefore, concerning these interesting communities, must be considered only an approximation to the truth as near as we can bring it from the facts already ascertained.

GOVERNMENT OF WHITE ANTS, OR TERMITES.

THE government of the extraordinary insect colonies belonging to the genus Termes does not appear to be quite so well understood as their labours in architecture and their destructive propensities; for though the different orders are sufficiently distinct, their analogies to bees and ants have not yet been clearly ascertained. From what has been observed by Smeathman †, it appears there are four different descriptions of these insects in each community; and Latreille has discovered a fifth, whence we have workers, nymphs, soldiers, males, and females.

The workers or labourers are not in their perfect state, like the workers among the common ants, but are only grubs (larvæ) as hatched from the egg. When full-grown they are about a quarter of an inch long, and they constitute the most numerous part of the population, there being at least a hundred workers to one of the soldiers, from which they differ in having round heads and short mandibles. They are the most active members of the community, *Euvres, x. 194. Phil. Trans. vol. lxxi.

being incessantly employed in erecting, enlarging, or repairing the buildings, foraging for provisions, or in attending to the eggs and the young.

The nymphs or pupa which were discovered by Latreille, differ little from the workers, except in having the rudiments of wings, or rather wings folded up, as happens with butterflies in the state of chrysalis*. They seem to be equally active as the workers, which probably led Smeathman to overlook their difference †.

The soldiers were supposed by Smeathman to be nymphs or pupæ, but Latreille discovered that they form a distinct order of perfect insects of neither sex, and not imperfectly developed females, as is the case with the workers among bees and common ants. There is about one of these soldiers for every hundred of the workers, and they are distinguished by their being more than half an inch in length, nearly fifteen times as large as a worker, and furnished with a formidable pair of awl-shaped, jagged mandibles, as hard as a crab's claw, and capable of inflicting a painful wound. Their head likewise is strong, horny, and larger than all the rest of the body. It is the part of these to guard the colony, and defend it from attack.

The males and females, unlike the preceding, become furnished with wings for the purpose of migrating to establish new colonies, but afterwards lose these wings, as do the females of common ants. Like the males and females of the hive-bee, they are exempt from all labour. These Smeathman has denominated kings and queens; though we must caution our readers not to take these terms according to the strict letter, for they have, apparently, neither power nor authority in the community, and are more *See Insect Architecture, p. 287. See Insect Transformations, p. 294, 5.