ABSTRACT
Insect states must be given a place apart in the sociology of animal species, for they are social structures of such complexity that they cannot be ranked with the animal societies already considered. Animal states exist only among insects ; they possess, in consequence, certain common characteristics, however much they may differ in other respects. Thus they are always spatially circum scribed by the dimensions of the nest ; further their members are always morphologically and psychologically highly differentiated, and are, in general, inconceivable apart from the community into which they are bom. It is perhaps not inapt to regard insect states as families, or “ super-families A bee-state would then be a mother family, and a termite state, in its simplest form, a parent family. But complications appear when, as among certain ants and termites, several egg-laying queens, or royal pairs, as the case may be, are present in the same community; or when insects of different origin unite to form one com munity, whether by reason of a slave raid, or in consequence of the adoption of a queen, or as a result of the peaceful fusion of two races. Any attempt at a rigid classification by relationship thus leads to great difficulties, and sometimes even to the separation of things in reality inseparable.
