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Updated: May 11, 2025
They abound most in calcareous rocks, which is precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red sandstone; next in slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks.
Amongst the ants of Central America I place the Eciton as the first in intelligence, and as such at the head of the Articulata. Wasps and bees come next to ants, and then others of the Hymenoptera. Between ants and the lower forms of insects there is a greater difference in reasoning powers than there is between man and the lowest mammalian.
The latter is specially characteristic of other orders of organic existence such as the Articulata being remarkably exemplified in the activities of the social insects such as the bee.
Blanchard's "Natural History of the Articulata," then a classic work, which he was to re-read a hundred times, and which he still retains, giving it the first place in his modest library, in memory of his early joys and emotions. The rocks also arrested and captivated his attention: and already the first volumes were corpulent of what was eventually to become his gigantic herbiary.
In many large coal-fields we continue as much in the dark respecting the invertebrate air-breathers then living, as if the coal had been thrown down in mid-ocean. The early date of the carboniferous strata can not explain the enigma, because we know that while the land supported a luxuriant vegetation, the contemporaneous seas swarmed with life with Articulata, Mollusca, Radiata, and Fishes.
In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach a moderately high stage of perfection.
For in the zoölogical system also these main-types of the invertebrates do not stand one above the other, but by the side of each other: at most, the radiata, the worms, the mollusca, and the articulata, take their places above the zoöphytes. Only within the main-types, in the classes, orders, etc., do differences in rank take effect; and even here, not without exception.
The heart is humbled as the eyes open to the grandeur of the scheme, and to the consequent littleness of individual manhood; but again, the breast swells with the purest of all pride, when the thinker says to himself: I am the King because the hero or highest type of the Articulata, Radiata, Mammalia, or any order of vegetable or animal life.
Belt has also made some extremely interesting observations on the Ecitons, whom for intelligence he places first among the ants of Central America, and as such at the head of the Articulata. See Naturalist in Nicaragua, 1888, pp. 17-29. Expeditions to acquire slaves. In order to reduce one's own species to slavery, it seems at first that an intelligence is required as developed as that of Man.
CRUSTACEA. The seas around Ceylon abound with marine articulata; but a knowledge of the crustacea of the island is at present a desideratum; and with the exception of the few commoner species that frequent the shores, or are offered in the markets, we are literally without information, excepting the little that can be gleaned from already published systematic works.
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