Packaku.] insects as AECillTECTS. 295 



11* Insects as Jirdxitects* 



A N historical sketcli of human architecture would 

 ^^~\ scarcely begin Avith a description of the capitol at 

 Washington, or of Westminster Abbey, or the still 

 incomplete catliedral of Cologne, but would rather extend 

 back to the earliest forms of human shelter, even to the 

 pile dwellings of prehistoric Switzerland ; nor would the 

 historian disregard the rock shelters of Europe and this 

 country, or tlie caves of Dordogne. In his accounts of the 

 rise of the art of building he would be obliged to treat the 

 subject after the method of tlie paleontologist, and recon- 

 struct the primitive dwellings of the men of the reindeer 

 period from the scanty relics of their age, with the aid of 

 the huts and wigwams of savage tribes now living. Work- 

 ing out these problems, he would then reconstruct in the 

 imagination the vast structure of Stonehenge, the palaces of 

 the Aztecs, and would then be prepared to deal with the rise 

 of architecture in Egypt, India and Greece. 



So we may study the subject of insect architecture in the 

 light of paleontology, and finding in the rocks the remains 

 of lost tribes, judge what manner of builders they might 

 have been by the work of their survivors of the present 

 day, v/hose forms for aught we know are little superior to 

 those of their ancestors of Devonian times, just as the sav- 

 age of to-day is perha|)s scarcely a step in advance of the 

 wearer of the skull of Tuolumne valle^', or the cave of 

 Neanderthal. 



Without much doubt the first cave-dweller was some Po- 

 duran (Fig. 230) or a Campodea-like being, if such lived in 

 Presilurian times. They were tlie troglodytes of that misty 

 period, living in holes in the earth, which wound their devi- 



7 



