tice of the fighting instinct, we may conceive that natural
selection would be competent to adapt the soldiers more perfectly for
their duties militant, by developing the head and jaws as offensive
weapons. Possibly, were our knowledge of the termites at all complete,
we should meet with all stages in the development and specialization
of the various grades of society amongst these insects--at least the
present state of our knowledge would seem to lead to such a conclusion
as being much more feasible than the theory of special or sudden
creation of the peculiarities of the race. It is admitted that the
termites are in many respects inferior in structure to the bees and
wasps, whilst the white ants themselves are the superiors of their own
order--that of the _Neuroptera_. That the termites preceded the bees
and their neighbors, the common ants, in the order of development of
social instincts, is a conclusion supported by the fact that the
_Neuroptera_ form the first group of insects which are preserved to us
in the "records of the rocks." Fossil _Neuroptera_ occur in the
Devonian rocks of North America; the first traces of insects allied to
the bees and wasps being geologically more recent, and appearing in
the oolitic strata. The occurrence of high social instincts in an
ancient group of insects renders the repetition of these instincts in
a later and higher group the less remarkable. The observation,
however, does not of necessity carry with it any actual or implied
connection between the termites and their higher neighbors, although,
indeed, the likeness between the social life of the two orders of
insects might warrant such a supposition.

[Illustration: FIG. 3. RED, OR HORSE-ANT (_Formica rufa_.) a, male; b,
female, winged; c, worker.]

The common ants (Fig. 3), the study of which in their native haunts is
a matter of no great difficulty, and one which will fully reward the
seeking mind, like the termites, possess three grades of individuals.
In a single ant's nest more than One female may be found, the ants
differing from the bees in this respect; and in the nests of some
species of ants there are apparently "soldiers" resembling the
military termites in the possession of large heads and well-developed
jaws. Very amazing differences are to be perceived amongst the various
species of ants. Differences in size are of common occurrence, but
naturalists have actually succeeded in classifying ants in a general
way, by