.L\'TS AS DOMINANT INSECTS. 5 



more remarkable, but also more obscure than the physical mutations 

 now engrossing the attention of biologists. 



Be this as it may, there is certainly a striking parallelism between 

 the development of human and ant societies. Some anthropologists, 

 *like Topinard, 2 distinguish in the development of human societies six 

 different types or stages, designated as the hunting, pastoral, agricul- 

 tural, commercial, industrial and intellectual. The ants show stages 

 corresponding to the first three of these, as Lubbock has remarked 

 ( 1894) : " Whether there are differences in advancement within the 

 limits of the same species or not, there are certainly considerable differ- 

 ences between the different species, and one may almost fancy that we 

 can trace stages corresponding to the principal steps in the history of 

 human development. I do not now refer to slave-making ants, which 

 represent an abnormal, or perhaps only a temporary state of things, 

 for slavery seems to tend in ants as in men to the degradation of those 

 by whom it is adopted, and it is not impossible that the slave-making 

 species will eventually find themselves unable to compete with those 

 which are more self-dependent, and have reached a higher plane of 

 civilization. But putting these slave-making ants on one side, we find 

 in the different species of ants different conditions of life, curiously 

 answering to the earlier stages of human progress. For instance, some 

 species, such as Formica fusca, live principally on the produce of the 

 chase; for though they feed partially on the honey-dew of aphids, they 

 have not domesticated these insects. These ants probably retain the 

 habits once common to all ants. They resemble the lower races of 

 men, who subsist mainly by hunting. Like them they frequent woods 

 and wilds, live in comparatively small communities, as the instincts of 

 collective action are but little developed among them. They hunt 

 singly, and their battles are single combats, like those of Homeric 

 heroes. Such species as Lashts flatus represent a distinctly higher 

 type of social life; they show more skill in architecture, may literally 

 be said to have domesticated certain species of aphids, and may be 

 compared to the pastoral stage of human progress to the races which 

 live on the products of their flocks and herds. Their communities are 

 more numerous ; they act much more in concert ; their battles are not 

 mere single combats, but they know how to act in combination. T r.m 

 disposed to hazard the conjecture that they will gradually exterminate 

 the mere hunting species, just as savages disappear before more 

 advanced races. Lastly, the agricultural nations may be compared 

 with the harvesting ants." 



2 " Science and Faith, or Man as an Animal, and Man as a Member of 

 Society." Translated by T. J. McCormack. Chicago. Open Court Publishing 

 Co., 1890, p. IQ2 et scq. 



