THE ANT AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 243 



which have come the complicated expressions of today; somewhere in 

 there, we may not say securely now, branched ont the great phylum which 

 led into the world of insects. We are wont to say that the first whirr of 

 insect wings was made by the dragon flies and great cockroaches of the 

 Devonian forests — an admission which of course implies that long earlier 

 ages saw the differentiation of this type of life. At all events the six- 

 legged type of articulates adapted to life in the water and air, full of 

 vivacity and agility, with full independence, equipped with all potentiali- 

 ties that come from abundant innervation — this type, this six-legged 

 articulate expression of existence, the insecta, started reasonably early on 

 its career. It is my desire to note only in passing that, however close and 

 direct may be the derivation of the vertebrate type from the primitive 

 articulate stock, we have no inheritance from, and hence only a collateral 

 interest in, this six-legged type of articulate life. Yet the outcome of 

 development along this line has led to most extraordinary displays of 

 morphological and psychic differentiation. A distinguished naturalist 

 has said that the brain of an ant is the most marvelous speck of matter 

 in existence. I hardly need, before this audience, to recall the exquisite 

 and minute specialization in morphology, physiological function, per- 

 formance, and, I should say, conscious or at least psychic behavior among 

 the most advanced attainments of development in the six-legged articu- 

 lates, the social insects. The ant colony is the ideal of differentiation of 

 function. Its members are by birth and inheritance, food and training, 

 destined to certain specific duties in the colony. Armies are marshaled, 

 wars are waged, the wounded nursed; the captives are trained for their 

 duties; gardens are planted and crops are harvested; the stock is fed and 

 food is stored, and a score of marvelous concerted doings which amaze us 

 by the perfection of their totality, which is — the welfare of the commu- 

 nity. Here the individual is actually constructed nervously and physically, 

 anatomically and physiologically, for the niche in the community Avhich 

 he is destined to fill. No human community where cooperative efficiency 

 has submerged the individual and has been the objective and the attain- 

 ment, no such human community has ever yet reached such an ideal of 

 joint effectiveness as has a colony of ants. The ants are nature's great 

 triumph, her highest performance in communistic effort and in coopera- 

 tive achievement. And what has come or can come of development along 

 this line? 



Let us look back a little into the antecedents of the ants. Says Pro- 

 fessor Wheeler, "So many genera and species of these insects appear full 

 fledged in the early Tertiary we are compelled to believe that they must 



