INSECTS
the belief in aristocracy vindicated by the ancient and honorable line of descent represented by the roaches and flowering in the termites.
One particular piece of evidence of the roach ancestry of the termites is furnished by the wings. With most termites the wings (Fig. 83) are not well developed, and
Fig. 84. Wings of Mastotermes, the hind wing with a basal expansion similar to that of the hind wing of a roach (fig. 53), suggesting a relationship between termites and roaches
their muscles are partly degenerate. In some forms, however, the wings (Fig. 84) are distinctly of the roach type of structure (Fig. 53), and these forms are undoubtedly more closely representative of the ancestral termites than are the species with the usual termite wing structure.
Our termites and those of other temperate regions constitute the mere fringes of termite civilization. The termites are particularly insects of warm climates, and it is in the tropics that they find their most congenial environment and attain the full expression of their possibilities.
In the tropics the characteristic termites are not those that inhabit dead wood, but species that construct definite and permanent nests, some placed beneath the ground,
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