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The Naturalist in Nicaragua by Thomas Belt
page 63 of 444 (14%)
stationary, and over them the main column passed. Another time they
were crossing a water-course along a small branch, not thicker than
a goose-quill. They widened this natural bridge to three times its
width by a number of ants clinging to it and to each other on each
side, over which the column passed three or four deep. Except for
this expedient they would have had to pass over in single file, and
treble the time would have been consumed. Can it not be contended
that such insects are able to determine by reasoning powers which
is the best way of doing a thing, and that their actions are guided
by thought and reflection? This view is much strengthened by the
fact that the cerebral ganglia in ants are more developed than in
any other insect, and that in all the Hymenoptera, at the head of
which they stand, "they are many times larger than in the less
intelligent orders, such as beetles."* (* Darwin, "Descent of Man"
volume 1 page 145.)

The Hymenoptera standing at the head of the Articulata, and the
Mammalia at the head of the Vertebrata, it is curious to mark how,
in geological history, the appearance and development of these two
orders (culminating, one in the Ants; the other in the Primates)
run parallel. The Hymenoptera and the Mammalia both make their
first appearance early in the secondary period, and it is not until
the commencement of the tertiary epoch that ants and monkeys appear
upon the scene. There the parallel ends. No one species of ant has
attained any great superiority above all its fellows, whilst man is
very far in advance of all the other Primates.

When we see these intelligent insects dwelling together in orderly
communities of many thousands of individuals, their social
instincts developed to a high degree of perfection, making their
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