196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



OUR SIX-FOOTED EIYALS. 



LET us suppose that, having no previous acquaintance with the 

 subject, we were suddenly informed, on good authority, that 

 there existed in some part of the globe a race of beings who lived in 

 domed habitations, aggregated together so as to form vast and pop- 

 ulous cities ; that they exercised jurisdiction over the adjoining ter- 

 ritory, laid out regular roads, executed tunnels underneath the beds 

 of rivers, stationed guards at the entrance of their towns, carefully 

 removed any offensive matter, maintained a rural police, organized 

 extensive hunting-expeditions, at times even waged war upon neigh- 

 boring communities, took prisoners and reduced them to a state of 

 slavery; that they not merely stored up provisions with due care, to 

 avoid their decomposition by damp and fermentation, but that they 

 kept cattle, and in some cases even cultivated the soil and gathered 

 in the harvest. We should unquestionably regard these creatures as 

 human beings. who had made no small progress in civilization, and 

 should ascribe their actions to reason. If we were then told that 

 they were not men, and they were in some places formidable enemies 

 to man, and had even by their continued molestations caused certain 

 villages to be forsaken by all human occupants, our interest would 

 perhaps be mixed with some little shade of anxiety lest we were here 

 confronted by a race who, under certain eventualities, might contest 

 our claim to the sovereignty of the globe. But when we learn that 

 these wonderful creatures are insects some few lines in length, our 

 curiosity is cooled; we are apt, if duly guided by dominant prepos- 

 sessions, to declare that the social organization of these beings is not 

 civilization, but at most gwcm-civilization ; that their guiding prin- 

 ciple is not reason, but " instinct," or ^^-intelligence, or some other 

 of those unmeaning words which are so useful when we wish to shut 

 our eyes to the truth. Yet that ants are really, for good or evil, a 

 power in the earth, and that they seriously interfere with the cultiva- 

 tion and development of some of the most productive regions known, 

 is an established fact. A creature that can lay waste the crops of a 

 pi-ovince or sack the warehouses of a town has claims upon the notice 

 of the merchant, the political economist, and the statesman, as well 

 as of the naturalist. 



Many observers have been struck with the curious mixture of 

 analogies and contrasts presented by the Annulosa and the Vertebrata. 

 These two classes form, beyond any doubt, the two leading subdi- 

 visions of the animal kingdom. To them nineteen-twentieths of the 

 population of the dry land, both as regards individuals and species, 

 will be found to belong, and even in the world of waters they are 



