THE EVOLUTION OF ANTS
filiform. This singular modification, too, is seen in several different genera in the tropics of both hemispheres. Finally, attention may be called to the development of a peculiar beard, consisting of long, forward-sweeping hairs on the lower surface of the head in several unrelated genera of desert ants. The hairs are rather stiff and form a kind of crate or basket, in which the ants carry up the dust or sand that they loosen while they are excavating their burrows. To account for all these exquisitely adapted forms or features there are only two hypotheses: either they have been developed gradually, in response to the environment in which the insects have long been living, or they were created at the same time as their possessors by a being having a prevision of their ultimate function. If the latter hypothesis is accepted we can only marvel at the Creator’s meticulous solicitude for the welfare of ants and His failure to provide adequate prophylactic measures against the many common diseases and calamities that have for thousands of years decimated the paragons of His creation.
Of course, the conclusions we have reached in regard to evolution among ants, though based on many more observations than those briefly cited here, relate nevertheless to a very small part of the animal kingdom. But during the last sixty years essentially the same conclusions have been reached by hundreds of other students, each of whom has investigated some particular group of organisms; and the combined labors of all these workers may be said to cover the whole extent of the plant and animal kingdoms, man included. Are we to suppose that this conclusion, unanimously reached by so many men who have devoted their lives to minute and conscientious observation and experiment, is the result of some marvelous unanimous hallucination, and that the truth lies with those who have given little or no study to the organic
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