HISTORY AND NATURAL HISTORY 29 



unwieldy as they were exact. Bogged down by the 

 weight of such terms as sympatrogynopaedium, syn- 

 aporium and heterosymphagopaedium, Deegener's 

 real contribution tends to be lost even to biological 

 scholars. 



A survey such as I am attempting here should not 

 try to be exhaustive; I shall dismiss with a word the 

 slight advance made by Alverdes (16) and the work 

 of many others without that. There is, however, 

 another phase of the literature whose reading has 

 given me so much pleasure as well as useful infor- 

 mation that I shall not pass it over: this deals with 

 the social insects. Espinas, Kropotkin, Deegener and 

 Alverdes of those mentioned, and a host of others, 

 have written in detail and in general about these 

 fascinating insects, but none more accurately or 

 with greater insight and literary as well as scientific 

 skill than the American entomologist, William 

 Morton Wheeler. His book on Social Life Among 

 the Insects, which appeared in 1923, is a noteworthy 

 general summary. (120) In this he shows that among 

 insects alone, and including such well-known forms 

 as termites, bees, wasps and ants, and the less gen- 

 erally known social beetles, the social habit has 

 arisen some twenty-four distinct times in about one- 

 fifth of the known major divisions of insects. It 

 would seem that there is a general reservoir of pre- 



