1910] Book Reviews. 113 



Review of Books, May, 1910, the work is pointed out as rather dry 

 reading- to the uninitiated. Let us take up the cudgels here, for that 

 reviewer certainly does not appreciate that the study of ants is the 

 most complicated field of enomology today, if considered only from 

 the standpoint of "Ants as Dominant Insects." the title of Chap. I. If 

 our reviewer friend was seeking a popular book for a hammock pipe- 

 dream which would titillate his cerebrum, at the same time imparting 

 true science, he should certainly be familiar with the pleasing work 

 of Dr. Henry C. McCook, "Ant Communities and how they are governed; 

 a study in natural civics," 1909. Dr. Wheeler's fat volume would have 

 expanded into a "five-foot shelf" to compass his knowledge, if he had 

 adopted the same entertaining style of the other. Even so, the lay 

 reader must find it difficidt to cease marveling at the unraveled prob- 

 lems in the fascinating chapters on Sanguinary and Degenerate Slave- 

 Maker Ants (XXV to XXVII), as well as recent light on some of the 

 Ant Guests (XXI-XXII), which savor of the ogres, the knights errant, 

 the crusades, slavery, fairies and the like of the Middle Ages. He says 

 (p. 503) : "He who without prejudice studies the history of the para- 

 gon of social animals, mankind, will note that many organizations that 

 thrive on the capital accumulated by other members of the community, 

 without an adequate return in productive labor, bear a significant 

 resemblance to many of the social parasites among ants. Space and 

 the character of this work, of course, forbid a consideration of the 

 various parasitic or semi-parasitic institutions — social, political, eccle- 

 siastical, and criminal — that have at their inception timidly struggled 

 for adoption and support, and, after having obtained these, have 

 grown great and insolent, only to degenerate into nuisances from 

 which the sane and productive members of the community have the 

 greatest difficulty in freeing themselves." There is nothing dull and 

 dry in this challenge to greater sanity on the part of mankind, as de- 

 duced from the intimate study of ants ; and what is more, this method 

 of deduction from scientific work seems to be growing popular, as wit- 

 ness the speech at Oxford, England, of our former President, Mr. 

 Roosevelt, "Biological Analogies of History." (Reprinted in The Out- 

 look, June 11, 1910.) 



Many of the illustrations are reproduced from excellent photo- 

 graphs from life. Little more can be desired to show the indoor life 

 of ants. The wealth of line drawings and figures, mostly original, 

 executed with splendid accuracy by Miss Ruth B. Howe under Prof. 



