The insects by general consent stand at the head of the Arthropoda. Their bodies are quite as much complicated or specialized, and indeed, when we consider the winged forms, more so, than any other class of the branch, and besides this they have wings, fitting them for an aërial life. It is with little doubt that to their power of flight, and thus of escaping the attacks of their creeping arthropod enemies, insects owe, so to speak, their success in life; _i.e._ their numerical superiority in individuals, species, and genera. It is also apparently their power of moving or swimming swiftly from one place to another which has led to the numerical superiority in species of fishes to other Vertebrata. Among terrestrial vertebrates, the birds, by virtue of their ability to fly, greatly surpass in number of species the reptiles and mammals. The Arthropoda are in general characterized by having the body composed of segments (somites or arthromeres) bearing jointed appendages. They differ from the worms in having segmented appendages, _i.e._ antennæ, jaws, and legs, instead of the soft unjointed outgrowths of the annelid worms. Moreover, their bodies are composed of a more or less definite number of segments or rings, grouped either into a head-thorax (cephalothorax) and hind-body, as in Crustacea, or into a head differentiated from the rest of the body (trunk), the latter not being divided into a distinct thorax and abdomen, as in Myriopoda; or into three usually quite distinct regions—the head, thorax, and hind-body or abdomen, as in insects. In certain aberrant, modified forms, as the Tardigrada, or the Pantopoda, and the mites, the body is not differentiated into such definite regions. In their internal organs arthropods agree in their general relations with the higher worms, hence most zoölogists agree that they have directly originated from the annelid worms. The position and general shape of the digestive canal, of the nervous and circulatory systems, are the same in Arthropoda as in annelid (oligochete) worms, so much so that it is generally thought that the Arthropoda are the direct descendants of the worms. It is becoming evident, however, that there was no common ancestor of the Arthropoda as a whole, and that the group is a polyphyletic one. Hence, though a convenient group, it is a somewhat artificial one, and may eventually be dismembered into at least three or four phyla or branches. The following diagram may serve to show in a tentative way the relations of the classes of Arthropoda to each other, and also may be regarded as a provisional genealogical tree of the branch.