Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole volumes might be, and have been, written. The habits of the termites, the so-called white ants, are less widely known, although they show one of the most remarkable developments of the family that I have met. Each colony is really a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descendants of a single pair, live in a community, and work in different ways. All the individuals are at first true males and females. Some of these develop slowly, but grow up perfect insects able to form new families. But the workers and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude in the community. These develop quickly, and grow up blind and wingless, and their reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development. Some of these are workers, and carry out the duties of the community; others at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. It is their duty to defend the colony. And from this has come about the strange condition of their being so altered and trained for their special work that they cannot pass on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect individuals. Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further step, and only females are selected to do household work, and modified so that they lose the ordinary personal instincts and devote themselves entirely to working for the community, while the males develop only the instincts and capacities of sex. In some species of wasps, however, the males do some work, chiefly domestic, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters. In the communities of ants, as in the termites, there are individuals modified to serve as workers and as soldiers; but here again they are all arrested females, and the males are used only for the purpose of sex. The colonies of ants last much longer than those of the bees and wasps, which are annual, and this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a very complex and extraordinary community.[13] We are always being surprised by new experiments in family life which show the ready adaptation of habits to special circumstances. A bald statement of these facts seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a whole series of devices and wonderful behaviour—so much that I should like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal instinct in the making. But so varied and so fitting to the needed purpose are the actions of these lowly parents that much which they do gives an impression of the inexplicable—even the magical.