Page:Ants, Wheeler (1910).djvu/37

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ANTS AS DOMINANT INSECTS.
5

more remarkable, but also more obscure than the physical mutations now engrossing the attention of biologists.

Be this as it may, there is certainly a striking parallelism between the development of human and ant societies. Some anthropologists, like Topinard,[1] distinguish in the development of human societies six different types or stages, designated as the hunting, pastoral, agricultural, commercial, industrial and intellectual. The ants show stages corresponding to the first three of these, as Lubbock has remarked (1894): "Whether

  1. "Science and Faith, or Man as an Animal, and Man as a Member of Society." Translated by T. J. McCormack. Chicago, Open Court Publishing Co., 1899, p. 192 et seq.