SOCIAL INSECTS 



of Linnaeus, " Xatura in miniiuis maxime mirarida," are not a 

 mere rhetorical effort, but the expression of a simple truth. Saint 

 Augustine, too, though speaking from a point of view somewhat 

 remote from that of the great Swedish naturalist, expressed an 

 idea that leads to a similar conclusion when he said, " Creavit in 

 coelum angelos, in terram vermiculos ; nee major in illis nee minor 

 in istis." 



The formation of organised societies by some kinds of Insects 

 is a phenomenon of great interest, for there are very few animals 

 except man and Insects that display this method of existence. 

 Particulars as to some of these societies will be given when we 

 treat of the Termitidae, and of the Hymenoptera Aculeata ; but 

 we will take this opportunity of directing attention to some points 

 of general interest in connexion with this subject. In Insect 

 societies we find that not only do great numbers of separate 

 individuals live together and adopt different modes of industrial 

 action in accordance with the position they occupy in the 

 association, but also that such individuals are profoundly modified 

 in the structures of their body and in their physiological 

 processes in such ways as to specially fit them for the parts they 

 have to play. We may also see these societies in what may be 

 considered different stages of evolution ; the phenomena we are 

 alluding to being in some species much less marked than they 

 are in others, and these more primitive kinds of societies being 

 composed of a smaller number of individuals, which are also much 

 less different from one another. We, moreover, meet with complex 

 societies exhibiting some remarkably similar features among 

 Insects that are very different systematically. The true ants 

 and the white ants belong to groups that are in. structure and in 

 the mode of growth of the individual essentially dissimilar, though 

 their social lives are in several important respects analogous. 



It should be remarked that the phenomena connected with the 

 social life of Insects are still only very imperfectly known ; many 

 highly important points being quite obscure, and our ideas being 

 too much based on fragments gathered from the lives of different 

 species. The honey bee is the only social Insect of whose economy 

 we have anything approaching to a wide knowledge, and even in 

 the case of this Insect our information is neither so complete nor 

 so precise as is desirable. 



The various branches of knowledge connected with Insects 



