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Title:      Consider Her Ways (1947)
Author:     Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948)
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Consider Her Ways (1947)
Author:     Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948)




Go to the ant, thou sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.

PROVERBS VI, v.6






CONTENTS

Author's Note

Introduction

I  The Isthmus

II  The Mountains

III  The Slope

IV  The Plain

V  The Seaboard

Appendix




AUTHOR'S NOTE


Certain human myrmecologists to whom the present book was submitted
in manuscript--the editor wishing to make sure of his facts, from
the human point of view--suggested that, among ants, the suspicion
would arise that definite individuals had served as models for the
characters of the story.

As a matter of fact, they have--to the ant.  The publication is
sponsored by an ant, namely, Wawa-quee, who, for reasons unknown to
the editor, wished mankind to become acquainted with her work.
Authors are notoriously vain.

If the editor's private opinion is asked for, he can only say that,
while he believes the picture of antdom given in these pages to be
essentially true to fact, and while he can vouch for the veracity
of the introduction, he suspects the remaining five chapters to be
the product of the ant's imagination and, therefore, pure fiction.


Pronunciation of names

In transcribing names the Pacific International Convention's rules
have been followed: all vowels have the Spanish values; all
consonants the German.  Thus e = English ay; a = English ah; w =
English v; qu = English kw.  A mute h is used to lengthen vowel
sounds.

A brief description of the city and the mode of life of Atta
Gigantea will be found in the appendix.

Here I will give a list of the chief characters of the book:

WAWA-QUEE (pronounce Vahvah-quay), organizer, leader and commander-
in-chief of the expedition.

BISSA-TEE (pronounce Bissa-tay), zoologist-in-chief.

ANNA-ZEE (pronounce Anna-zay), botanist-in-chief and renowned
philosopher.

LEMMA-NEE (pronounce Lemma-nay), geographer-in-chief and most
intimate friend of Wawa-quee.

ADVER-TEE (pronounce Adver-tay), expert in communication.

AZTE-CA (pronounce Aztay-cah), chief signaller and recorder.

ASSA-REE (pronounce Assah-ray), military commander-in-chief of the
escort of the expedition.

MINNA-CA (pronounce Minnah-cah), commander-in-chief of Pogonomyrmex
armies.

Names ending in 'ee' indicate that their bearers belong to the
highest nobility; if translation were aimed at, the syllable would
have to be rendered by 'Lord'.

Names ending in 'a' indicate that their bearers belong to the
second rank of the aristocracy, as in English the title 'Sir' would
indicate a member of the lesser nobility or gentry.

All characters are, of course, directly transcribed from life.

F. P. G.



INTRODUCTION

It has long been a question interesting both to the zoologist and
the psychologist how to interpret the social life of certain
members of the order Hymenoptera, In fact, scholastics and
ethologists have fought some of their most memorable battles over
this problem.  On one side stood those who regarded instinct as a
mere mechanism of unconscious and hereditary impulses; on the
other, those who saw in it something closely approaching to plastic
intelligence.  In other words, according as the human-race conceit
of the investigator was strongly or weakly developed, the behaviour
of these insects, and especially of the ants, was placed either in
contrast or in comparison with the behaviour of man.

The present book, I believe, will settle that question.  The
Formicarian author, whether writing of her own congeners or, as she
occasionally does, of us humans, reveals a world of which, I
venture to say, few men have ever dreamt.

But let me explain how the book came into my hands.

For decades I had been an amateur myrmecologist; myrmecology had
been my hobby.  My study of ants went back to a time when the
science was just developing into something like a systematic
survey; and, I being by training a classicist, it had taken its
starting-point from such ancient observations as those of Pliny and
Aristotle.  In more recent times, footing on Latreille's and
Mueller's investigations, men like Forel, Huber, Emery, and, quite
lately, Wheeler had in the light of the evolutionary theory
attacked the various problems presented by the mass of known fact;
and while adding considerably to the foundations, both by
observation in the field and by dissection under the microscope,
they gave their special attention to the task of ethologic
interpretation.  Guided by the conclusions they had arrived at, I
improved what opportunities I had of observing such species as were
locally represented where I lived.  Yet, until I met with the works
of Bates and Belt, my interest remained casual.  These two authors,
who were not myrmecologists, properly speaking, and who, perhaps
for that very reason, kept the wider connections of the subject
more clearly in view, aroused in me, through the records of their
observations, the desire to see a little more for myself; and
since, while I remained at home, the demands on my time were always
manifold, I made up my mind, a few decades ago, to devote a
prolonged holiday to the purpose of hunting down one or two
colonies of the leaf-cutter ant of inter-tropical America.  I
intentionally restricted the scope of my investigation to a single
genus; nor had I, so far, any idea of furthering science; I merely
wished to satisfy my own curiosity.

My choice of locality fell on Venezuela; and, during an otherwise
uneventful passage from Cuba to La Guaira, I had the good fortune
of falling in with an American planter naturalized in that country
and living on the very edge of the tropical forest in the eastern
part of the coastal plateau where he grew sugar-cane and coffee.
On hearing of my plans he very hospitably placed his house at my
disposal; and although I knew that Spanish-Americans will do so
without dreaming of the possibility that they might be taken at
their word, I thought it safe--he hailing by birth from Illinois--
to accept his invitation as being meant sincerely.  After landing
at La Guaira, I accompanied him first to Caracas and then into the
interior.

Since my purpose is not to write a book of general travel in the
tropics but simply to explain how this book came into being, I will
not expatiate upon the scenery or the flora and fauna of the
country which many an abler writer has depicted for the curious
reader.  Suffice it to say that, arrived at my friend's plantation,
I at once settled down to a monotonous routine.  Daily I rose at
five in the morning, before sun-up, and an hour later went to the
margin of the jungle where I soon located three colonies of the
species Atta Gigantea.  About eleven I returned to the plantation
and, after partaking of a refreshment prepared by my bachelor-
host's Chinese servant, lay down in my hammock on the large, shady
veranda which had been assigned to me as my part of the spacious
house.  At four o'clock, when the westering sun began to beat down
less scorchingly, and when the often violent showers of the early
post-prandial hours had somewhat cooled the air, I returned to my
ant-hill to watch.

Often nothing worth recording happened for many days.  Yet even
uneventful hours served to establish a certain relationship between
the ants and myself--a relationship which led to most extraordinary
developments.

I had arranged a not uncomfortable seat by cutting the arm-thick
stems of two hanging lianas close to the ground and twisting their
ends together so as to form a sort of swing, out of reach of
possible inroads of ants and other terrestrial insects.

Close by my aerial seat, a foot or so to the left--I faced south--
led one of the beaten tracks of the colony which I had singled out
as the largest.  The main part of the hill which measured thirty
feet in diameter and which consisted of the coalesced crater-
entrances, each two inches across, to the subterranean burrows was
a few yards to the south and to the right or west of myself.  A
second colony was established a hundred yards beyond the first; a
third, as many rods to the south-east.  My detailed observations
remained restricted to the nearest one.

I always took a book along to read while I was perched on my seat;
for, since things extraordinary happened rarely, it would otherwise
have been tedious.  I soon developed the power of subconsciously
keeping an eye on the ants; not, of course, on individual members
of the colony, but on their masses.  Any unusual commotion at once
focused my attention; and, laying down my book, I could concentrate
on whatever happened.

I shall try to sketch the routine activities of these ants as they
would have gone on had I not been present or had my presence been
ignored.

The crowded craters of the hill always presented the spectacle of
numberless multitudes of ants entering and issuing forth.  There
was no confusion; everything proceeded methodically; and
continually order evolved out of a seeming chaos.  The ants
dispersed on the various paths radiating in all directions from the
burrow.  On the track which passed at my feet and which was worn to
a marvellous smoothness, much more smoothly than human work could
have made it, three currents could be distinguished.  The total
width of the path being about twenty inches, the central ten inches
were covered by a dense stream of ants returning to the colony;
each individual carried in its jaws, projecting perpendicularly
upward and backward, a small, circular leaf-disk which gave its
bearer the appearance of a medium-sized butterfly sitting with its
wings folded up.  These ants, however, were not sitting still.
Each disk was nearly an inch in diameter while the ant carrying it
was somewhat over half an inch in length.  One author has compared
the procession to Birnam wood advancing up the hill to Dunsinane.
On both sides of this returning column there was a counter-current
of out-going ants each about five inches wide; these ants, of
course, went empty-handed or rather empty-jawed.

By and by I came to know that, besides the main entrances in those
crater-like depressions in the mound, the colony had many other
exits or approaches which rose slantwise from the subterranean
cavities and opened to the surface at considerable distances from
the hill, some as far as fifteen or twenty yards away.  These were
never used by the ants attending to the routine work.  Such as I
discovered I examined from day to day; and I found them sometimes
open, sometimes closed.  They served as ventilators to regulate the
temperature in the brood chambers, besides affording exits and
entrances to those who, for the moment, were not engaged in the
routine work.  In case of emergency, of course, all openings would
have been used; but no such case came under my observation.

These ants do not by any means feed on the leaves which they cut.
As Belt conjectured and Mueller proved, they use them as the
substratum on which they grow their real food, a minute fungus
which is carefully cultivated and forced under optimal conditions
of temperature, moisture and illumination, or rather lack of
illumination.

Whenever I followed the worker column, I found that they were
operating at various and sometimes considerable distances from the
colony.  They would come to a point under a young tree or bush
where the ground was strewn with the circular cuttings.  Each ant
picked up a disk and instantly fell into line in the central,
returning column.

In the top of the tree, each leaf was tenanted by a worker who,
holding on with her hind-feet as a sort of pivot, was slowly
swinging around, making a circular cut with her scissor-jaws.  When
this cut was nearly completed, the ant still standing on the disk,
the forefeet of the little worker took hold of the remainder of the
leaf; and when the last connection was severed, the disk fluttered
to the ground, the ant dexterously swung up on the blade and at
once proceeded to make a new cutting.  No leaf was left while
enough of the blade remained to yield another disk of regulation
size.

It would seem that such habits must be exceedingly destructive to
the forest; but I found no evidence that it was.  When I first
came, the ants were working at a distance of sixty yards east of
the colony.  I instantly concluded that they preferred certain
kinds of trees and went so far afield because their supply close to
the hill was exhausted.  But it was not so.  Plenty of trees of the
same species were to be found between the burrow and the scene of
their cutting activities; and not one of them was dead.  Even in
our north, of course, a tree robbed of its foliage in early summer--
by hail, let me say--will put forth a second crop, though a less
abundant one; and if this growth remains undisturbed, the tree will
recover.  In the tropics, I reasoned, where the demarcations of the
seasons are largely obliterated, such a process of recuperation
would be possible at any time provided the tree is not at once
despoiled again: perhaps, then, these ants did not return to the
same tree till it had had time to make good the loss sustained?  If
this could be proved, it would go far to settle any doubt as to the
truly agricultural principle on which they work; they would not be
"mining" the forest but utilizing its surplus energies; just as man
utilizes, without--in theory--impairing, the fertility of the soil.

A single fact seemed to stand in the way of this explanation.  The
human population which has had ample experience with these ants is
emphatic in the assertion that it is useless to plant vegetables
and fruit-trees; sooner or later these ants will find them; and
they will despoil them again and again, till plants and trees are
killed.  That the ants might consciously discriminate against the
plantations of man never suggested itself to me till the fact was
sprung on me as a complete surprise when at last I entered into
direct communication with them.  Amazing as it is, these
astonishing little creatures discourage the intrusion of man into
the tropical forest with definite intention and purpose.  They do
not approve of man.

I never dug into the burrows of the colony.  I felt I had no right
to destroy their elaborate works just because I had the physical
power to do so; and that, I believe, was one of the reasons why I
was singled out for the mission with which I am entrusted.

But in order to give the human reader an adequate idea of the
material side of the life of these ants, I shall quote the results
of such investigations of others as confirmed my own conclusions.
My chief authorities are Bates, Belt, Sumichrast, and Mueller.

If the weather is propitious, the leaf-cuttings are carried right
into the upper chambers of the burrow.  If, on the contrary, a
shower has wetted them, they are dumped outside and left to dry.
In the upper chambers, other workers, so-called mediæ who on
account of their smaller size are better adapted for work in the
crowded galleries, take charge of the leaves and cut them into
microscopically small shreds which they work up into a loose,
spongy mass.  In this condition still smaller mediæ take them into
the garden-chambers and suspend them from their vaulted roofs to
serve as the soil for the growth of the fungus on which they feed.
Their charge now passes from the mediæ to the minimæ whom their
minuteness (they are less than an eighth of an inch in length, a
thirty-secondth in width) enables to pass freely through their
interstices; and theirs is the task of weeding and cultivating.
All these activities are supervised by the maximæ who are sometimes
erroneously called soldiers.  Their chief characteristic consists
in the relatively enormous size of their heads which contain brains
of a corresponding development.  This brain, I believe to be
relatively the largest single organ of any living being known.  The
work of feeding and caring for the broods falls on the so-called
callows or immature workers; while the purely sexual functions of
reproduction, at least dimorphic reproduction, are the exclusive
domain of the short-lived male and the long-lived perfect female or
queen.

In order to round off this sketch, I add a brief outline of the
history of a colony.

At a given time of year the young males and queens raised in the
colony issue for their marriage flight.  No queen mates with a male
of her own colony.  In every formicary hundreds of physiologically
perfect individuals of both sexes are raised.  The time for this
marriage flight is carefully determined by the maxims; and, strange
to say, it is, within narrow limits, the same for all colonies of a
given district; so that, for a day or so, the air swarms with
winged ants, many of them, and those the most vigorous ones, flying
at great heights; while the vast majority perishes in the streams
and pools of the country.

The fertilized queen--one fertilization fills the seminal
receptacle for the life of the queen--at once locates the spot
where she desires to found her colony.  She excavates a short
gallery and, at its end a small spherical chamber.  Having done
this, she closes the entrance through which she is never again to
pass unless extraordinary disasters befall her colony.  Next she
dealates herself; i.e., she gnaws off her wings.  This is necessary
in order to bring about, within her tissues, those structural
changes which enable her to feed her first brood--as mammals do--on
the secretions of her body.  At the same time she deposits in the
small chamber a little ball of the fungus hyphæ or roots which she
has brought from the parent nest, thus providing for the food of
her future broods.  Meanwhile her ovaries are maturing, and she
begins to lay eggs.  The hyphæ she manures with her anal
secretions; and when the first brood hatches, she feeds them with
the metabolized tissues of her hypertrophied organism.  She herself
can go without food for months at a stretch.  Her first offspring
consists exclusively of minims.  They at once open the gallery;
some of them continue the work of excavation, some issue forth and
start to cut leaves.  Since even their work, small as their number
is, yields a surplus, the fungus-garden soon expands.  The next
brood is reared by these minims and fed with fungi; its members
show the first differentiation in size; and the division of labour
begins.  The queen never works again: she lays eggs instead.  In a
year or two the colony exhibits all the forms which constitute the
complete social organism, a large formicary of this species having
been ascertained to harbour, in its eighth year, slightly under a
hundred thousand individuals.

A good deal of controversial literature has been written to account
for the seemingly automatic functioning of the ant-state.  How does
the queen know what to do?  How do the first minims learn to go out
and to cut leaves?  On the whole, instinct has been held to explain
it all.  It is interesting to see, in the pages that follow, how
much of man's activities ants ascribe to instinct.  Instinct is a
convenient word without real meaning which, for that very reason,
serves admirably to veil the ignorance of those who use it.  There
can be no doubt any longer that, as with us, not instinct, but
tradition and education furnish the true explanation of the facts:
that much this book settles beyond question.  The queen is
elaborately prepared for her life-work while she still lives in the
parent colony; and she, in turn, teaches the first minims.
Instinct is supposed to function automatically and, by its very
definition, to be infallible.[1]  But any observer can verify the
fact that ants make mistakes which they rectify.  Belt has
observed, and I can confirm the statement, that young workers will
cut and bring to the burrow disks of the blades of grass which are
unsuitable for the growth of the fungi.  "Aberration of instinct!"
cry the scholastics, explaining one meaningless term by another.
If they would go to the trouble of watching, they would see that
the very ants that made the mistake are forced to remove the grass
and will never again bring it into the burrow.


[1] This is Wheeler's definition:  "An instinct is a more or less
complicated activity manifested by an organism which is acting,
first, as a whole rather than as a part; second, as the
representative of a species rather than as an individual; third,
without previous experience; and fourth, with an end or purpose of
which it has no knowledge."


Having thus introduced my human readers to their formicarian
brethren, I resume my narrative.  What I have so far described as
the routine of these ants is simply what I should have seen had I
myself been invisible or unscentable.  As a matter of fact,
however, my presence created right from the start a sensation.

When, on the first day, I approached somewhat closely, I could not
but notice a certain degree of confusion in the lines on the path.
There was a momentary delay in their progress, especially in the
outgoing columns which spread in width; and this congestion was
speedily propagated back to the burrow.  The central, returning
column, too, was retarded but after a second resumed its progress
at an accelerated pace.  More important, however, than either of
these disturbances was the fact that, long before those who were
passing me when I appeared could possibly have reached the burrow,
a number of huge ants, measuring at least an inch in length,
exclusive of antennæ and legs, and endowed with enormous triangular
heads, apex down and base up, appeared in the openings of the
formicary.

For a moment they lingered, surveying the scene; and I was much
impressed with their air of deliberation, while their geniculated
antennæ worked precisely like groping hands held up in the air.
Although I was eight feet from the burrow, I saw distinctly the so-
called stemmata or median eyes with which their heads were equipped
in addition to the compound lateral bundles of ommatidia.  These
stemmata gave the giant ants a peculiar look, as though they wore
spectacles; and that bestowed upon them an oddly intelligent air.
I was reminded of Belt's remark, "The steady, observant way in
which they stalk about and their great size compared with the
others always impressed me with the idea that in their bulky heads
lay the brains that directed the community in its various duties."
This impression was strengthened when they came stalking up to the
scene of the disturbance.  There can be no doubt but that the news
of my approach had spread with telegraphic speed, ahead of the
returning column.  For the fraction of a second these big ants gave
their attention exclusively to me; but somehow they must have
inferred that my intentions were not hostile; for in less than half
a minute after their arrival order was restored in the triple
procession: the routine work went on as before.

The maxims, however, did not at once return to the hill.  They
lingered and seemed to go into conference, touching each other with
their antennæ, now at the head, now at the thorax, and even at
various points of the abdominal segments.

My readers must figure themselves as being just within the margin
of a tropical forest, its giant trees hung with the festoons of
immense lianas.  Travellers are emphatic in describing the interior
of these forests as the gloomiest place on earth.  On a quiet day,
such as this was, a stealthy silence broods over the moist
atmosphere and in the impenetrable shade of the lofty foliage,
becoming all the more oppressive when it has occasionally been
pierced by the unmelodious scream of an invisible bird.  Nothing is
so suggestive of panic and unreasoning fear as the thought of being
lost, alone, in this vast cradle of terrestrial life.

That day, this feeling was intensified by the weird, incomprehensible
scrutiny of these ants.  Without analysing my feelings, without even
being conscious of the background of hearsay knowledge from which
they arose, I felt, almost as a physical presence, the fact that
nowhere does life prey on life as ruthlessly as in these woods where
fierce cats and serpents live on mammals, spiders on birds, and
numberless insects on all things quick and dead.  The extreme beauty
of detail in the vegetation did not avail: I was in the grip of
primitive disquietudes; I was being surveyed and appraised by alien
eyes connected with an intelligence beyond my mental grasp.

I did what I had come to do quickly, almost nervously: I prepared
the seat from which I intended to make my observations; and then I
returned to the estancia, unable to subdue my shivers.  A few hours
of rest restored my equilibrium; and I laughed at the confusion
into which I had been thrown by my first encounter with these ants.

When, next day, I resumed my post, I had a book along.  This
expedient proved successful; for it was several weeks before I felt
again unbalanced.  Meanwhile I watched while reading.  A careless
observer would henceforth not have noticed anything beyond the
routine of the carrier columns.  But I made it a point not to be
careless.  Whenever I mounted guard, two changes took place.  One
of the giant ants made her appearance at a point in the flank of
the columns next to my seat.  There she stalked up and down, up and
down, in a stately, watchful way, over a distance of from twelve to
twenty inches.  Only once did I prove to myself that she had a
definite function.  Intrigued by her eternal vigilance, I made, on
arrival, straight for the path as though to cross it.  Instantly,
the maxim having just appeared, the column broke, leaving a clear
space where my foot would have descended.  The movements were so
minutely concerted that there could be no doubt of their being
executed in pursuance of an order issued.  When a half minute had
gone by without my repeating the threat, the column re-formed with
the same precision.  The second change consisted in the appearance
of another maxim on top of the wide, flat mound formed by the
coalesced entrance craters.  This ant stationed herself so as to be
almost hidden in one of the slanting galleries, with nothing but
her large triangular head protruding.  I was reminded of a sniper
in a trench or bomb-hole.  She stayed as long as I stayed, never
once moving or changing her position.

Thus weeks went by; and since nothing new ever happened, I began to
concentrate more and more on my reading.  The monotonous routine
began to have a beneficial effect on my nerves; yet it seemed that,
apart from this, nothing further could be gained by prolonging my
stay.  As I have said, I did not care to pursue my studies by
destroying their city; others had done so before; the purposes of
science had been served; and though this particular species, Atta
Gigantea, had, to my knowledge, never been investigated in detail,
I had no doubt that the burrow and the organization of the
community varied in no appreciable degree from those on which
authors had written.

In spite of all that, there was a strange fascination about my
work.  I was convinced that these thousands upon thousands of ants
that filed along the path had come to know me and expected my
presence at given times of the day.  That the maxims were on the
look-out for me, was evident; they appeared the moment I entered
the forest.  A bond of sympathy established itself between myself
and the ants; exactly as a commuting clerk in a human city learns
to expect certain faces in the train which conveys him from the
suburb where he lives to the urban block where he works; till he
would miss the face of an individual otherwise unknown to him
should that individual fail to appear.  I even conjectured long
before I knew it to be a fact that one set of workers filed past in
the morning, and a different set in the afternoon.  It was not an
actual observation; the only thing which might have suggested the
thought was the sight of workers of all sizes issuing from certain
side galleries and moving about in an aimless way, apparently for
no other purpose than that of recreation; for, though they seemed
busy enough as they scampered about, I never saw them do any work.

Gradually, too, the character of the surveillance under which I was
kept underwent a change.  At all times eyes were focused on me,
critically and appraisingly.  But while, in the beginning, that
surveillance had been hostile, it had become expectant and
purposeful.  I cannot say how this shading-off in their attitude
was conveyed to me, unless I were to ascribe it to a sort of
transference of thought.  If anything fits me peculiarly for
observational work, it is an infinite patience with life in all its
forms.  Something like a tacit understanding arose between myself
and these ants; I began to look forward to my hours in the forest
as one looks forward to hours of congenial company.

Then, one day, a series of extraordinary events opened up.  I used
to sit tailor-fasion in the loop of the two lianas which formed my
seat, my back leaning against one of the pliant stems, my book
resting on one knee.

One day, soon after I had settled down, I suddenly saw, on casually
looking up, that, along the liana in front of me, one of those
giant ants or maxims was coming down from above.  I cannot tell
whether this was the first time she had appeared there; but it was
the first time that I became aware of her.  She must have climbed
the trunk of the tree, gone out on the branch, and descended along
the hanging trunk of the climber.  When she arrived at the level of
my face, she stopped; and, fastening herself with her four hind-
feet to the scaly bark of the liana, she lifted her thorax and head
so as to look straight at me, and then she began to wave her
antennæ in the most regular, steady, and purposeful manner.  For a
few moments I remained motionless; then I slowly raised my hand.
Instantly she dropped to the ground whence, in her stately and
deliberate way, she returned to the burrow.

The following day she reappeared as soon as I had taken my seat.
Again she stopped at the level of my face and began to wave her
antennæ.  This time I did not offer to disturb her.  I knew that
the bite of the powerful jaws of these maxims is amply capable of
drawing blood; but I was not afraid.  As a matter of fact, violence
seemed to be the last thing she was bent on.  For many minutes she
sat there, waving her antennæ eighteen inches from my face.  More
than anything else it was her persistence which held me motionless.
The hand in which I grasped my book had sunk down, my knees were
spread.

Thus I sat for more than an hour.  Involuntarily, my attention had
become centred on the black, polished stemmata or median eyes in
her head.  Their glint and glitter seemed so human.  With all the
intensity of which I was capable I wished to understand what this
ant was about; but her shining eyes and the unceasing motions of
her antennæ slowly had a confusing effect.

I was so absorbed that I lost track of my surroundings; till, with
a violent start, I became aware of the presence of a second ant.
This second ant had climbed up on the open pages of my book where
she was standing on all her six feet.  She too, was waving her
antennæ; and her eyes glittered with the same intent purpose as
those of her sister.  As I said, when I became aware of this second
ant, I gave a violent start; and as I did so, both dropped to the
ground.

I was bewildered and puzzled as I returned to the plantation.
Something uncanny had unbalanced me.  Without explaining it to
myself, I felt as though I were in the power of these ants.  I half
regretted ever having taken an interest in any such insects.  I
played with the idea of returning at once to the saner world of our
North-American cities.  At the same time I was convinced that I
should do nothing of the kind; that, on the contrary, I should
return to the ants next day: I knew I had "to see this thing
through".

Still, all night long I dreamed of gigantic ants, ants the size of
elephants, besetting my path in the forest and standing about,
holding me at bay with their huge, trunk-like, waving antennæ.

A sort of obsession took hold of me.  I read of nothing but ants; I
thought of nothing else; I talked of them; I dreamed of them.  I
could no longer close my eyes without at once seeing myself in the
gloomy shades of a tropical forest, surrounded by ants of mammoth
size that lorded it over me.  And what happened next was not
calculated to rid me of that obsession.

Two days later I was hardly seated at my post when the maxim
appeared on the hanging trunk of the liana; and this time she was
followed by two others who also engaged in the frantic and
incomprehensible waving of antennæ.  I kept on the look-out for the
one that had climbed up on my book; but she did not come.  Instead,
two whole rows formed on the ground, to both sides of my seat, all
waving their antennæ and focusing their eyes on mine.  A shiver ran
down my spine; but I did not stir; and thus half an hour went by.

Something was happening to me.  A numbness invaded my limbs; I
tried to turn my eyes and could not.  I knew that the routine work
of the carrier columns was going on all the time; but I did not
know how I knew.  My mind, however, was singularly free and mobile;
and this gave me a queer sensation: much as a paralytic may
contrast his mental agility with his muscular rigidity.  For my
body was invaded, like a separate entity, by a purely physical
sense of drowsiness.  I made a violent effort to rouse myself; in
vain.

And suddenly I was aware of the fact that that other ant had again
swung up on my book.  By a sort of second sight, for I knew I had
not moved my eyes, I saw her sitting there, waving her antennæ.

Meanwhile my eyes remained focused upon the group of three ants in
front of my face.  They formed a short isosceles triangle with its
apex down; all three were clinging to the bark of the liana with
four hind-feet, holding the front-feet stretched out, downward, as
though in the effort to counteract the violent upward twist of
their thorax which supported the triangular head with its waving
antennæ and glistening eyes.

I must have fallen into a state next to actual sleep or anæsthesia.
My eyes were open.  Moments of clear but vacant consciousness were
obliterated by lapses of an absolute mental void.

After one of these lapses I suddenly realized that the ants had
left me.  This jarred my mental faculties back into functioning;
and I was once more capable of a normal exertion of the will.  I
tried to swing my feet to the ground; but my movements, resembling
those of a man whose limbs have "gone to sleep", were very awkward.
I fell with a dull thud, bruising my head against the roots of the
tree.

The violent impact roused me, and I got to my feet staggering.  My
head ached; and without further thought I turned north, into the
path leading to the estancia.

My headache became worse; and, forcibly banishing all thought of
what had happened, I lay down in my hammock, and was soon asleep.
For once I dreamed neither of ants nor anything else; I lay like
one dead; and it was with some difficulty that my host roused me
for the evening meal.  I did not say a word of my adventure; I was
determined first to find its key.

On awaking I had had a very peculiar sensation.  I had not seemed
to be I.

Just what that portended I could not say as yet; but I felt that is
was momentous.  I can imagine a doctor feeling like that when he
has gone into an area stricken with pestilence.  He watches himself
for symptoms, alert at all times to apply to himself the remedies
which he has been administering to others.  Even while he is in
perfect health, he keeps watching for signs of his being invaded by
the disease.

All sorts of inconsequential thoughts floated through my mind that
night.  I wondered whether the ants who--of that I had no doubt--
were responsible for my condition felt as restless as I did myself;
whether this thing meant as much to them as it did to me.  There
was no answer, of course.  I pursued the questions only in order to
let the preoccupation with side-issues veil the tremendous
significance of the facts of the case.  By some mesmeric action I,
my individuality, had been sucked up or down into an alien mass-
consciousness which communed with me through channels other than
those of the senses.  The moment I surrendered myself, my
consciousness was that, not of my former self, but that of ants,
and of no individual ant, so far; but of all antdom, or at least of
the community of these particular ants.  I felt as though I were on
the verge of a revelation.

"You did not sleep well last night?" my host asked next morning.

"No," I replied.  "The fact is I am on the point of an important
discovery in entomology."

"Glad to hear you are successful," he congratulated.

How inadequate it all seemed!  As soon as I could decently do so, I
left him and hurried into the forest,

I had hardly sat down in my seat when I saw the first of my new
friends coming down the liana.  Today her movements lacked that
ceremonial, circumspect, and mysterious air; they were businesslike
and matter-of-fact.  Other maxims were all about, on the ground.
The individual on the liana gave some sort of signal to her
companions, but what this signal consisted in I could not have
said.  Instantly a second ant swung up on the page of my book.
Whether this was the same ant that had been there before I did not
know; I presumed so.  Now I had my first close look at this
individual.

At once I knew her to be an ant of mark.  She was hairier than the
others, though her hairs were much broken and worn in places.
Since I knew that the hairs of ants are improperly so-called, their
function being, not that of protection, but that of exceedingly
delicate sense-organs of odour and touch, I recognized in her a
more finely-organized being, brainier than her companions.  I also
had the impression of extreme old age; her armour was deeply scored
and abraded; and though it may not have been a colour impression at
all, there was about her that which suggested greyness--and
weariness, that weariness which goes with great wisdom and a wide
experience in the ways of the world.  Henceforth I should have
recognized this ant among thousands of swarming individuals of her
caste.

This venerable dean among ants, then, set to work waving her
antennæ.

For a moment I was absorbed in watching her procedure.  With head
lowered, she raised first one then the other of these delicate
organs and swung them down again; and slowly, as I watched these
manoeuvres, I became aware that the movements were not straight up
and down either, but modulated and embellished, as it were, by a
thousand different vibratory oscillations of varying amplitudes
which had at first remained unnoticed.

Almost immediately following that observation, a peculiar sensation
invaded me.  I felt my own consciousness slipping.  There was an
intermediate stage, resembling that of a person who is being put
under the influence of an anæsthetic: the stage when he is still
aware of what is being done to him but already finds it impossible
to defend himself against the influence invading him; he tries to
lift his hand in protest and thinks he is succeeding; but in
reality his body has already given in.  At that stage I was still
seeing, still watching the ant; but already she was drawing my
consciousness into her own; and with her consciousness her purpose
had become my own.

That purpose was to convey to me an experience, the contents of a
whole life.  Just how this experience and this life became my own,
I cannot tell, of course; nor how long this state of mesmeric
transposition of personality may have lasted.  To me it seemed to
extend over years and years; in reality it was probably comprised
within minutes or even seconds.  For, when, on awaking from this
trance, I staggered to my feet, I saw that the minute hand of my
watch seemed hardly to have moved at all.

I went "home"; that is, back to the estancia; but while doing so, I
knew that I was not yet I.  I walked and acted like a human being;
but my mind was that of the ant; I had lived her life; and her
memory was mine.  I could look back upon all she had gone through;
and it devolved upon me to put down a record of what, by some
miracle, had been communicated to, or infused into, my consciousness.

I cannot, therefore, claim that what follows is my work.  It is the
work of Wawa-quee, the ant; and it must be read in that sense.  I
merely set it down, under compulsion.

Perhaps I should add that I went back to the formicary once or
twice.  I never again saw my friend; but the activities of the
tribe went on undisturbed as though nothing had ever happened to
interrupt their placid flow.

F. P. G.



CHAPTER ONE

The Isthmus


Containing adventures with hostile leaf-cutting ants; man; his
great water-beetle; and three armies of legionary ants.


I


As is well known to all Gigantean Attas, it has ever been one of
the glorious traditions of our dynasty that each queen succeeding
to the throne should, at least once in her reign, equip and send
out, for the furtherance of knowledge, an expedition into distant
parts of the world.  In the past, such expeditions had consisted of
from half a dozen to a score of ants who, as a rule, had gone
south, east, or west.  Their aim had invariably been that of
geographical, geological, meteorological, botanical, and zoological
exploration; and the result is known as consisting in the
illustrious body of science contained and digested in the scented
records traced on the sacred trees east of our city.

These records contain the natural history of our country.  In the
past, it had been found that each acquisition of knowledge opened
up new provinces of ignorance.  Each expedition that returned home,
great as was the store of new knowledge acquired, had brought in
its train new problems for investigation.  For a long time, then,
the object of a further expedition had defined itself by the very
achievement of the one completed.  Yet, when the last, undertaken a
score of years ago, had returned, the problem defining itself had
seemed to be of such a magnitude as to defy even the courage and
enterprise of ants.  This had been in the reign of Her Glorious
Majesty's predecessor Orrha-wee CLXV.

When our present sovereign had entered upon the fourth year of her
reign without sending out, in pursuance of that august custom, a
new expedition, it was generally assumed that the apparent neglect
was due either to a profound conviction that further knowledge was
beyond our reach or to the suspicion that a greater interval of
time was needed to digest the results so far attained.

It remained a profound secret from the multitude that Her Majesty,
from the very beginning of her reign, far from being discouraged by
the problem which had defined itself as the result of previous
expeditions, had, on the contrary, conceived the plan of surpassing
all her predecessors by the scope of her project.  In preparation
she had secretly, though in consultation with a few leading
thinkers, sent out certain individuals and even groups to
reconnoitre the country to the north which, so far, had been
considered as presenting insurmountable difficulties to our
advance.  Her Majesty had honoured me by directing that all
findings of these investigators were to be reported to myself; and
that I should receive and store up these findings and ponder them
till I had found ways and means to despatch an expedition into
those terrestrial regions of this continent which lie north and
west of the Great Narrows.  In all my conferences with Her Majesty
it struck me that she never enjoined upon me to ponder WHETHER such
an expedition would be possible; the problem was simply WHEN AND IN
WHAT MANNER it would be advisable to launch it.

Her Majesty never doubted, never hesitated about the aim; but she
was willing to bide her time.  Her faith in the powers of the
formicarian mind was nothing less than an inspiration; and when, in
the fourth year, I outlined to Her Majesty a plan which, I never
doubted, would be rejected, on account of the hazards which it
involved and the uncertainty of its success, she embraced it with
the greatest enthusiasm; and, a little to my discomfiture, she
conferred upon me unheard-of powers, appointing me to lead that
expedition myself and to take immediate steps to launch it into the
unknown.

Now I had the honour of being of the exact age of Her Majesty; and
I shrank from the weight of the responsibility.  This will be
readily understood: an Atta queen is, at four years, a young ant;
but a mere maxim has, at the same age, in all formicarian
probability, entered upon the declining quarter of her life.  I
pointed this out to Her Majesty; but she insisted, calling my
attention to the fact that a great task had before this enabled
ants of my caste to live beyond their traditionally allotted term
of life.  She was pleased to use many flattering expressions in
explaining to me just why I was to act as her deputy, referring to
my previous record as an investigator and organizer, and ultimately
hinting that, in her opinion, the success of the whole unheard-of
enterprise depended on my devotion to Her service; and perhaps I
may add that at last she modified her request, changing it from a
command into a prayer.  At that I could no longer refuse.

Let me define the purpose of the expedition.  To use Her Majesty's
own terms, it was to complete such a survey of all antdom as to
enable us to trace the evolution of the nation Atta from the
humblest beginnings of all ants and to make it possible for us to
arrange the whole fauna of the globe, or of such portions of it as
could be explored, in the form of a ladder leading up to our own
kind.  This involved a cataloguing and a classification of all
forms of life to be found on the continent; a tremendous task.

Let me skip an interval of eight years and speak of the present.

The results of the expedition which ultimately set out and which,
with one exception, namely, myself, perished in the course of its
work, have been set down in detail on 813 scent-trees surrounding
our city.  This having been done, it pleased Her Majesty to ask me
to compose a popular account of the whole undertaking, to serve as
an introduction to the detailed study of special subjects; and the
present narrative is the result of my compliance with Her request.
The sequence of events and investigations observed is not strictly
chronological; and occasionally a record is introduced in an order
the very reverse of chronological; for the present aim of Her
Majesty is systemic rather than historical.  It is to present the
main results in such a way that they can be grasped as a whole.
Still, a thread of narrative remains; for we found that, the
farther we left our home country behind, the less dominant were
ants on earth; and the more distinctly was their place taken by
that curious mammal called man.  More than that; as we proceeded
north and left one climatic province after another behind, we found
ever new genera and species of ants assuming the leading part in
the control of the country; and, as the curious will scent, they
offer, in their succession, a definite scale of development.  It
will become abundantly clear that our own race stands at the very
apex of creation as far as that creation is completed today.


II


As I have said, it pleased Her Majesty to give me discretionary
powers for the organization of the expedition.  I immediately
secured the co-operation of five leaders in their respective
fields.  At first I was tempted to reserve at least one department
to myself; but I feel convinced that it was wiser not to do so.

I secured "their co-operation"; for I realized that, though the
powers conferred upon me were sufficient to command their services,
it would have been inadvisable to use these powers.  We were going
to be absent for a space of years; we were going to be exposed to
dangers from all sorts of sources; we were going to meet with
unheard-of hardships and difficulties: unless we were bound to each
other by the bonds of mutual esteem, loyalty, and even love, no
exertion of authority would have sufficed to keep us together; and
had we ever separated into smaller groups, we should have been
doomed to extinction.

Each of these leaders was in turn to secure her own staff, being
free to choose, from the vast bodies of ants learned or skilled in
their respective fields, whomever they thought fittest for the work
and best able to adapt themselves to the peculiar conditions and
problems that were bound to arise in an enterprise of so vast a
scope.

To myself I reserved no other privilege than that of convening the
plenary meetings for the deliberation of such problems as concerned
more than one group and of acting the part of a central clearing-
house of ideas and a depositary of their findings.

In this way I brought into being five bodies, each consisting of
from twenty-five to thirty-five individuals and aggregating 162
maxims.  The leader of each group occupied with regard to its
remaining members the same position which I occupied with regard to
the whole body; and they were at liberty to group themselves into
smaller bodies for the discussion of special problems.  One of
these groups consisted of geographers, one of botanists, one of
zoologists, one of experts in communication, and finally one of
expert scenters skilled in reducing the findings of any body into
the briefest and most pregnant scent-form.  The task of keeping the
meteorological records was handed over to members of group four.

These, then, represented, apart from one other individual and
myself, the brains of the expedition and its High Command.

This other individual was the far-famed Assa-ree, our general-in-
chief, who was to be independent of the scientists, experts, and
artists and responsible to myself alone.  She was not told at the
time that it had pleased Her Majesty to confer upon me absolute and
unconditional vice-regal powers by virtue of which I held her life
in my jaws.  I will confess that, much as I shall have to praise
her undoubted genius in the field, her unequalled courage in the
face of an enemy, and her unheard-of ability to organize and to
control large bodies of ants, she had one grievous fault which I
feared as much as a source of evil as I appreciated its potentiality
for good: she was ambitious; she was impatient of control and illy
brooked any intervention between herself and Her Majesty.  Since,
at a later stage, tremendous issues forced me to make use of my
powers and since she, as a consequence, did not return, I must
enter into some detail.

There had been rumours that she was herself a "throw-back"--an
individual not entirely normal and exhibiting characteristics which
aligned her with certain ancestral types of retarded development.
There had been talk that, though she had never had wings, she
had encroached upon the royal prerogative of laying eggs--
parthenogenetically produced--from which viable offspring had been
raised by our callows who never suspected that these eggs were
illegitimate.  What lent these rumours an air of verisimilitude was
the fact that, from season to season, our broods were found to
contain numbers of "throw-backs" resembling an ancestral type of
fighting ants more closely than true Attas.  There had finally been
rumours that treasonable thoughts were no strangers to Assa-ree's
heart; that she aspired to the crown; or to a position, below the
crown, of all but absolute power; and that, if she failed in her
ambitions, she would not hesitate, should occasion offer, to desert
her own nation and to join that nation's enemies.  I had never
credited these rumours; and, I am glad to say, they had never
reached the antennæ of Her Majesty.  There was, however, in our
recent military history, one circumstance which made me suspect the
nature of her powers; and that was the ease with which, on the
occasion of the last invasion of our territories by an enormous
army of Eciton Predator, she succeeded in side-tracking that army,
so that we were never even troubled with their raids.  It was
rumoured that she had singly entered the hostile army and issued
orders as coming from their own supreme command.  But whatever her
powers might be, I held to the fact that she had used them for the
salvation of our people.

Yet, when I approached her on the present occasion, I could not rid
myself of the impression that there was about her the faintest aura
of a fecal odour such as is well-known to surround all Ecitons; and
that was the reason why I solicited and obtained from Her Majesty
the special power over life and death to which I have referred and
which was given to me in the form of very small pellets of the
three great royal perfumes: the perfume of Supreme Command, the
perfume of favour, and the perfume of death.

When I first approached Assa-ree with my request for her co-
operation in the interest of the expedition, I was, for the
fraction of a second, conscious of an intensification of that fecal
odour.  But my disquietude was allayed by the readiness with which
she embraced the plan.  This was the more gratifying to me as,
without some sort of military escort, the expedition could not have
started.  Her first demand, on the other hand, made me suspicious
again.  She asked for absolute authority, not only in training but
even in levying the army.  Unless she was given a free hand, she
would not undertake the task.  Yet, having gone so far, I did not
see how I could refuse.  In some mysterious way the conviction came
to me that, unless I indulged her, I should make myself the means
of driving her into open revolt; and I was too profoundly
penetrated with the teachings of our penologists not to feel that
her extraordinary gifts might be led into channels where they would
work as readily for the good of our nation as, under different
circumstances, they might work for its evil.  Her next demand
could, after this, no longer be denied: she asked for permission to
secede from our city: she urged that a fighting body, drilled and
organized, and mentally reoriented in such a way as to make them
obey her own single will rather than the call of the community as
such, would prove a serious source of disturbance within a
commonwealth where voluntary devotion to the common weal was the
central principle from which freedom flowed.  In what she added she
seemed to me to be playing with fire, though she tempered her plea
with a peculiar ironical humour which was bending back upon
herself.  Her argument was that, among Attas, military gifts were
necessarily associated with a retarded mentality, capable of
holding on to only one idea at a time; we were fortunate, she
scented, in having no small numbers of such backward members in our
midst; for without them we should speedily succumb to a hostile
world; so long as these were scattered as individuals among large
numbers of fully civilized ants, they might never even be suspected
of aberrant instincts; but the moment they were segregated and
brought together in solid masses, they would necessarily begin to
feel their mettle and become the cause of friction; they might even
prove a serious danger to the state.

All which was so reasonable and so self-evident that I agreed in
spite of my suspicion that Assa-ree was poking fun at me.

The next question was that of numbers.  It so happened that there
had just been a census; the total number of Attas, maxims, mediæ,
and minims in our city had been found to be 435,313 souls, which
number was, of course, subject to slight fluctuations from day to
day.  Callows were hatched, and old ants died.  Now Assa-ree asked
for ten thousand; and this estimate was so little above my own
estimate of the number necessary, namely, eight thousand, that I
conceded it without argument.

But here is the point.  When, four months later, Assa-ree reported
that her levy was complete and I reviewed the troops in person, I
was struck by the fact that the ranks presented an alien aspect and
that, above all, most of the officers seemed to have extraordinarily
large and curved jaws.  Yet I had seen an occasional individual like
that in our city; what amazed me was the large number in which, on
this occasion, I saw them assembled.  But, as Assa-ree and myself
walked along the front of the serried ranks of this army, the scent
with which I was cheered, though it, too, partook of that fecal
quality which I have mentioned, was so enthusiastic that I could not
doubt the loyalty of these troops, no matter of what suspicious-
looking elements they might be composed.  So I suppressed my
misgivings, arguing that, if we wanted fighting power in our escort,
we had better take it as it offered itself; and that this army had
that fighting power, there could be no doubt.

Yet my suspicions were revived once more.  Bissa-tee, chief
zoologist to Her Majesty and leader of the zoological group of the
High Command, expounded it as her theory that even in communities
devoted entirely to the arts of peace the birth rate rises when an
extraordinary enterprise demanding the possible sacrifice of life
is planned.  She asked for a new census.  When it was taken, she
triumphed, of course.  In spite of the fact that, according to
Assa-ree, ten thousand individuals had been conscripted, the
population of the city had risen to 435,328, or fifteen more than
there had been before the draft.  Even allowing for the correctness
of Bissa-tee's theory, this seemed so amazing that I could not
account for it.

I will anticipate and state that, years later, just before Assa-ree
made her final bid for power, by means of the most detestable
treason, I extracted from her an admission, which she made in the
form of a boast, that, while she had indeed levied numbers of Attas
exhibiting a military atavism (all of them closely related to her;
in fact, being her illegitimate offspring), the minutest search for
such individuals had failed to produce a levy, among the maxims and
mediæ, of more than 2,114 able-bodied ants; the rest of the levy
she had made up by winning over, no doubt using her fecal odour for
the purpose, stray bodies of Ecitons, of the species Eciton
Hamatum, our deadly enemies.

In a way I cannot but rejoice at the fact that neither I nor anyone
else had the slightest knowledge or even suspicion of the extent of
her treason at the time; had we had such a suspicion, we should
never have started on our expedition; we should, instead, have
rushed into civil war; and who knows what, with such an enemy, the
outcome would have been?  Our ignorance of the facts served the
commonwealth in two ways: in the first place, we led a most
dangerous potential enemy away from our country: more dangerous, in
fact, than a purely Eciton army of ten times its number would have
been; for against such an enemy our usual means of defence would
have availed, whereas this highly trained and efficient fighting
unit knew all about these means of defence and could have
circumvented them, as they would undoubtedly have done had we, by
even the slightest hesitation, betrayed any knowledge of its true
nature and composition; in the second place, enormous as were the
losses sustained in the course of our march through a largely
hostile continent, the expedition was led to a successful issue;
and the wealth of new knowledge acquired in its course has been
made available for the future, for our nation and all antdom, if
only by the survival of a single individual, namely, myself.

One last word with regard to the army.  When I proposed eight
thousand as the number to be levied, I had in mind that a third or
a half of this number should be composed of Attas intermediate
between the fighting and the carrier types.  For in addition to
those exclusively levied for purposes of defence and attack we
needed a considerable number of individuals who would carry a
supply of fungus-hyphæ* or roots in their infrabuccal chambers.  I
anticipated the possibility of meeting with climatic or other
conditions which would force us to entrench for weeks or months at
a time, and if, in times of unemployment, we had to go without our
accustomed food, it might prove an unendurable hardship.  I felt
certain that we could always secure leaves suitable as a substratum
for the cultivation of our fungi; but lack of seed would, in such a
case, have been fatal.  Besides, I had hit upon the plan of
establishing, in favourable localities, hidden fungus-gardens on
which we could fall back should hunger or defeat, by whatever
enemy, force us into a hurried retreat.  I am glad to say that, at
least in this particular, the provision made by Assa-ree proved
adequate, though it fell far short of what I had expected her to
do.


* See appendix.


III


The order in which we set out, seven months after we had begun
preparations, was as follows.  The van, to the number of two or
three hundred, was composed of scattered individuals and groups of
particularly powerful physique and intrepid spirit.  All of them
were volunteers, which insured at least that they did not fear but
rather relished their task.  Immediately behind them came a corps
of skilled signallers, specially trained to emit the most pungent
and fast-diffusing scents by which to give warning and information
as to what was happening in front.

Then followed a massed body of fighters, commanded from the rear by
Assa-ree.  These formed a solid front and two solid flanks.  Their
rear was supposed at all times to form a hollow crescent enclosing
that body which I have called the brains of the expedition and in
which no particular discipline or marching order was observed.  It
was followed by another massed body of carriers and fighters who
again enclosed the central body with a crescentic arrangement of
their forward ranks.

Since the country which we had to traverse before reaching the
Great Narrows was well-mapped and known in every detail, we
travelled, to begin with, by night.  This distance of 95,000,000
common antlengths[1] was covered by forced marches in 150 nights--no
mean achievement.


[1] A common antlength (length of a media) is 1/2 inch.  750
miles. E.


When, after this forward thrust, we made our first stop, we were in
a peculiar country of great rocky mountains clothed with verdure
and studded with lakes, but exhibiting also more or less barren
uplands adorned with only a scanty vegetation of Cecropia and
Acacia trees.

So far, provisioning had offered no difficulty.  Our march had led
past a good many friendly cities of our own kind where arrangements
had been made in advance to supply the High Command with shelter
and food.  The army as such had never entered these cities; for
Assa-ree had undertaken to look after her own commissariat; and
when I found that she relied entirely on foraging raids, I rested
content with this arrangement.  It was essential to reduce our
demands on hospitably-inclined colonies to a minimum; and even when
we found that these fighting hordes of ours reverted very largely
to the aboriginal custom of feeding on carrion, I did not object.
For no matter how we, the High Command, fared, it was important to
conduct matters in such a manner as always to provide amply for the
rank and file.

But now we were entering upon terra incognita; and though we met at
once with other tribes closely related to ourselves, the Oecodomas,
we were, for the first time, to have the experience of finding our
overtures tending towards friendly intercourse repulsed.

To our agreeable surprise, Assa-ree had proved herself equal to any
emergency; but while we continued our advance, literally fighting
our way on all sides, we, the High Command, had at last to go
without food for forty or fifty days.  And then our whole advance
was brought to a stop.

We came to a point where an unbroken chain of Oecodoma cities
reached from coast to coast in a north-south direction; more than
once we hurled massed bodies of our troops against this chain;
nothing was gained.  We had to encamp.

I called a council of war to meet at night.  I well remember the
occasion.  We were at an elevation of at least 48,000 antlengths
above the sea.  All about, we were surrounded by a barren, rocky
highland with a broken surface.  In front, at a distance of 63,000
ants, rose a forbidding escarpment to a height of 3,600 antlengths;
but its crown was covered with a dense forest reaching westward; it
was within the margin of that forest that the line of Oecodoma
cities barred our way.  Almost overhead stood a full moon; and the
atmosphere, in the open, was chilly enough to stiffen our joints.
But the meeting was held in a recess of perpendicular rocks which
retained the heat of the day.  To our left, the remainder of our
central body had gone to rest in a manner which we had learned from
our bitterest enemies, the Eciton Hamatum.  This method was as
follows: two of the strongest ants attached themselves with their
fore-legs to a low branch of a dead acacia.  To their hind-legs
four were clinging; and so on, till, in the ninth or tenth tier,
the flaring curtain thus formed by living bodies reached a width
sufficient to fold over from both sides and to enclose a hollow
funnel which was filled by the remaining ants in a dense cluster.
The army was encamped in a similar manner south of us and out of
sight.

When I opened our deliberations, I gave it as my opinion that, at
no matter what cost of time or energy, we must establish friendly
relations with our cousins, the Oecodomas; and two of the group-
leaders, Bissa-tee, the zoologist, and Lemma-nee, the geographer,
were inclined to agree with me.  But Anna-zee, the botanist,
pointed out, not perhaps without a semblance of justice, that it
was too late for attempts at conciliation; blood, she said, had
flowed on both sides; it could not be wiped out.  So I asked her
what she had to propose; and she replied sardonically that, once
blood had been shed, there was only one remedy and that was to shed
more of it.  Anna-zee, as we shall see, often had the disconcerting
knack of brushing aside what she called self-deceptions.  At this
very moment I saw Assa-ree stepping into the gap between the walls
of our retreat.

By way of greeting she raised her antennæ and then brought them
down with a sweeping movement.  Both Anna-zee and Bissa-tee spoke
to me later in admiration of the physical grace of this great ant-
of-war; both remarked upon the proud humility of her bearing.  I
could not quite understand such a misinterpretation; but, since her
greeting was exclusively addressed to me, I being the only ant she
had to consult, they did perhaps not have a full opportunity to see
her in the same light in which I saw her.  I could not overlook the
distinct outward swing which she knew how to impart to the movement
of her antennæ: it was an unmistakably ironic curve.  The scents
with which she proposed a way out of our difficulty were respectful
enough; yet, to me they seemed to be too exaggerated to be quite
sincere.  Very briefly, she engaged to induce any colony of
Oecodomas to leave their city for our special accommodation,
without the use of force.  I was on the point of asking her why,
if such was in her power, she had not offered to do so before
blood had been shed.  But my colleagues closed with her offer so
enthusiastically that I thought it best to observe a discreet
silence.

I must give Assa-ree her due: she was as good as her scent.  Next
morning we entered a deserted city which contained a wealth of
fungus-gardens quite beyond our requirements.  The rest of our High
Command, even Anna-zee and Bissa-tee, far and away the most eminent
of our scholars, accepted this service as a sort of miracle that
must not be too closely questioned; and, for the moment, it solved
an urgent problem.

But before we moved on, I made it my business to investigate.  My
motive was neither that of an idle curiosity nor that of a desire
to spy on Assa-ree.  But I considered that the safety of the whole
expedition depended on what I am tempted to call my own omniscience
with regard to the doings, the wishes, and the thoughts of all its
members.

Now, at the very time of entering this marvellously well-built city
of the Oecodomas I had been struck by the presence of a faint smell
that seemed suspicious.  It was not the race-smell of any leaf-
cutting ant; nor was it the adventitious nest-smell peculiar to
every individual colony.  These cannot be mistaken by any
experienced contact-odour sense such as I flatter myself to
possess.  It was an alien smell, hard to identify because of its
faintness.  It had, apparently, not been questioned by anyone else.

The most minute examination of the main entrance-craters failed to
furnish the slightest clue.  Then, one day, bent on recreation, I
took a turn in the forest; and quite accidentally I came across a
wasp on the ground which seemed to be expiring; and instantly I
recognized the suspicious smell which here was pungent and
pronounced.  This unfortunate wasp had been surprised by an army of
Eciton Hamatum; had been deprived of her power of motion; had been
partially dismembered; and had then, for some mysterious reason,
been left behind.  I hurried back to our temporary abode and, armed
with this clue, soon discovered, in a crevice of one of the side-
entrances, a tiny fragment of the abdomen of this very wasp--a
fragment so bitten into and almost chewed up by the powerful
sickle-jaws of Ecitons as to make it practically unrecognizable.

How Assa-ree had got hold of this fragment I can, of course, not
tell; but her scheme now explained itself.  These particular
Ecitons must be so powerful, and their power so well known that the
mere suspicion of their approach was enough to put to flight a
whole colony of Oecodomas.  This Assa-ree knew; and that was the
most disquieting feature of the whole thing.  I knew, and I knew
that Assa-ree knew, that we could not forever avoid meeting an army
of these Ecitons; I anticipated, and I suspected that Assa-ree
anticipated, that we should be attacked.  If we were, it would be
her task to defend us, it was hard to say with what prospect of
success: an issue before which the stoutest heart might be
permitted to tremble.  Yet she could use this fear of the Ecitons
to play a joke upon a whole nation of ants closely related to
ourselves and, in a manner, upon me and my associates.  It was not
a thought to allay my secret disquietudes.  Above all, I knew from
that day on that sooner or later matters must come to an issue
between her and me.

To finish this topic by anticipation: a further discovery was in
store for me.  Assa-ree had driven to flight, not only the one
colony of Oecodomas which she had promised she would persuade, by
peaceful means, temporarily to abandon their city for our
convenience, but the whole line of colonies stretching across, the
Narrows of the continent.  This I discovered in the course of the
following days.

One night, the leaders of the High Command being again in
conference to discuss the best route to follow from that point, she
entered our conclave a second time.  The meeting being held in a
subterranean chamber, we were in utter darkness, and I could not
watch her demeanour in detail.  But in her greeting to me, in the
course of which she touched first my antennæ, then my thorax and
head, I seemed again to detect that exaggeration of deference which
could not but conceal her irony.  The import of her message was
this.  Since we should necessarily have to return by the same
route, she would like to point out the expediency of keeping this
gap open.  Lemma-nee, the geographer, was so amazed at the boldness
of the proposal that she squirted out, "Can it be done?"  Assa-ree
brushed the question aside by the slightest motion of her antennæ
and repeated her offer in a scent of affected weariness.  I
resolved to embrace the plan and signified as much.  I could feel
Assa-ree stiffening: she interpreted my lack of amazement as an
affront.  Yet her resentment was expressed by nothing but an
increase in deference.  You wish it, she signified, in scents still
more subdued than mine had been, and it is done.

Next morning, when we had left the city, I ascertained, while the
ranks were being formed, that she had cunningly concealed a tiny
fragment of the same wasp in each of the main entrances of the no
less than 103 Oecodoma cities which formed the barrier across the
narrowest point of the continent.


IV


I must now reach back in time and resume the narrative at the point
where we entered the Oecodoma city.

Not far from the northern end of this barrier across the Narrows
and just west of it, stood a city built by man.  Although the
detailed zoological and ecological study of man was not directly
comprised in our instructions, I thought it inadvisable to neglect
this opportunity.  Man, forming part of that large division of the
animal kingdom called the Mammalia, had been studied previously by
a number of expeditions, but with inconclusive results.  It was
known that, by virtue of a number of peculiarities, he occupied a
somewhat unique position within that group.  It was suspected, on
the ground of things reported by trustworthy observers, that his
position among mammals might somewhat resemble the position of ants
among insects.  It had even been suggested that his development, in
the past and in certain branches of his kind, had almost reached
the same level as ours today; in that case he would represent that
most interesting type of a retrograded or degenerate race; and I
must confess I was inclined to embrace this view.  One daring
speculator had even hinted that perhaps man possessed, or at least
had possessed, that same imperial gift of reason which is
universally held to be the distinguishing mark of ants.

Before I summarize what was previously known of man, I will briefly
state what led me to the conclusion that man is a degenerate type.
In this I shall, of course, anticipate the results of later
investigations.  In the first place, it is an axiom among
biologists of the first rank that every individual of no matter
what species, in its development from the embryonic state to the
imaginal, adult, or final state, summarizes the development of the
race.  If, then, it can be shown that the adult stage, in some
essential point, shows a retrogression from the development reached
in an immature phase, the only conclusion possible to be drawn is
that the adult represents a degenerate type.  Now my students will
have to take my scent for it that man's instincts approach plastic
intelligence in the young; the adult shows no trace of it.  For
proof of this I must refer to scent-tree number 349.  In the second
place, I cannot imagine a state of affairs in which, the animal in
question having reached the stage where a social life (as distinct
from a herd life) becomes possible, as man has, the male is the
dominant sex; and it is with man.  This is against all reason.
Every male is capable of fertilizing many females unless it dies in
copula (male man does not); yes, the seminal fluid discharged in a
single copulation suffices (at least with us) to fertilize
thousands of ovules; even where the male is not restricted to a
single copulation (as it is with us), it is the rule that, after
having fulfilled its proper function, it serves for such menial
offices only as defence or the labour of procuring food, etc.  I
cannot think of any other animal which has developed to the social
stage--distinctly an achievement of the female--and which
nevertheless supports its males in a dominant position.  I
therefore conclude that, in the past, man, too, has lived under
matriarchy as we do today.  If this conclusion needs further
support, that support is furnished by the fact that young human
males play at being females, acting as though they had brought
forth callows and carrying images of such about in their forelimbs.
From this stage, which must necessarily summarize a lost
development of the race, they gradually degenerate, even
individually, into a pure, arrogant, and ignorant masculinity.
This argument seems, to me, to be conclusive.

Now for the summary of our previous knowledge of man.

Even in our own country these destructive animals are to be found
sporadically.  As is well known, they kill, without provocation or
discrimination, all living things, sometimes at sight, sometimes
after having enslaved them for a time.  The native vegetation on
which the rest of creation depends for shelter and food they
destroy by fire or otherwise.

On an average they are 70 ants long, 36 ants wide, and 20 ants
thick, measuring their length from the top of their heads to the
fork of their extraordinarily long hind limbs.  Of these limbs,
they have four though, as a rule, they use only two for locomotion:
a fact characteristic of the contempt in which they hold nature's
gifts.  The head resembles a hard sphere of bone overlaid with a
thin layer of pinkish flesh which, in turn, is covered with a more
or less dark-coloured filmy and pliable skin.  It is provided with
two round, simple eyes excellent for distant, but singularly ill-
adapted for minute and accurate vision.  Two prodigious skinny
excrescences served originally as covers for their ear-passages;
but they have long since, through disuse, become worthless for this
purpose.  A large, fleshy protuberance in the centre of the face is
presumed to harbour the vestiges of a sense of smell, also largely
lost by neglect.  The mouth, below, consists of a transverse slit
armed with bony plates for mastication and measuring from six to
eight ants.  The most striking proof of a lack of natural
intelligence, or of its loss, is to be found in the fact that, by
millennia-long neglect, man has forfeited the most important means
of communication, orientation, and fixation of records, namely, the
contact-odour sense.  This sense, which we, by intelligent use and
careful breeding, have developed to such a remarkable acuteness and
applied to such sublime purpose, has, with man, become rudimentary.

Their bodies are not, as ours, protected by a defensive, chitinous
ectoskeleton but with soft integuments of varying composition.  I
shall later speak of them again.  These integuments have, by
certain zoologists, been used to support the theory that man as a
species has never yet become fixed; they are of such extraordinary
variety.  The latest observations, however, had led to the daring
theory that man moults at will.  Of this, too, we shall treat later
on.

To a certain extent man is social in his habits, not only with
regard to his own kind, but also with regard to certain mammals and
birds which, phylogenetically, stand quite remote from him; as,
f.i., dogs, cats, parrots, chickens, and others.  It is significant
that all his more intimate associates are chosen from the lowest of
the great subdivisions of the animal world, the vertebrates.

Such, apart from a few details which the curious can read up on any
standard scent-tree of zoology, was what was definitely known of
man.

Every now and then, however, the assertion is met with, in some
more speculative monoscent, that certain acts of man, observed and
recorded by careful investigators, argue for at least the traces of
a reasoning power.  Such-and-such a thing, it has been said, cannot
be explained by a mere animal urge or "instinct"; it has to be
attributed to more or less conscious deliberation and logical
inference; it seemed to prove the existence of a "plastic
intelligence" directing a "plastic behaviour".  But, if many
learned ants have advocated this view, an equal number have scoffed
at it.  Reason seemed to be such an incomparably precious gift that
it was hard to imagine other creatures to be endowed with it,
creatures remote from our own race which was by nature destined to
rule the world.

Perhaps this is the place for a brief digression.  Everybody knows
that in most systems of philosophy evolved in the past it is
tacitly assumed that reason is one and indivisible, as though, to
use a bold metaphor, it had sprung fully armed from the brain of
some super-ant.  It is now pretty well acknowledged by most
biologists that this theory or assumption is untenable.  Even with
us, reason is the result of a long and slow assimilation of
experience, and it is still in the making.  Wherever, therefore, in
what follows, the word is used without qualification, it is to be
understood as referring simply to the present phase of development
among Attas.

Here, then, were a number of problems on which I thought it worth
our while to throw as much light as we could.  Our present
adventure, however, which must excuse this digression, will be set
down without further comment.  The facts speak for themselves.


V


The first notice I received of the presence of man in these parts
came from reports given by Assa-ree; it consisted in no more than a
casual mention of the fact that a small colony, comprising some 500
individuals, was located on a bold cliff overjutting the sea.

I commissioned Assa-ree to reconnoitre; and her second report was
more detailed.  The colony consisted of a number of dusky
individuals whose integuments were scanty and bright in colour.
They were given to rapid and incomprehensible chatterings
resembling those of monkeys in our native woods.  I had a curious
suspicion that these chatterings might conceivably represent their
method of communication; for the widely attested fact of a social
life, with its division of labour, presupposed some such power.
Among these darker men lived one individual differing markedly from
the others, both in colour of facial skin and in integuments.  The
latter Assa-ree described as pure white in colour and fine in
texture, apart from his hind-feet which were encased in an
ectoskeleton of bright brown and of considerable hardness.  He--it
was a male--must have occupied a leading position among the rest;
for a number of the dusky individuals seemed to wait on him much as
certain adult workers of ours wait on Her Majesty.  His abode
consisted of a number of lofty and spacious chambers one of which
contained large cases of a transparent, rock-like substance filled
with glittering, uncanny-looking things of unknown purpose.

These reports inspired me with a desire to see for myself.  We knew
from former investigations that man's communities are often vastly
more numerous; I reasoned, therefore, that this was an opportunity
to study him individually, unconfused by numbers.

I had Assa-ree conduct me to the abode of this curious individual.
All her observations were confirmed, and at least one was added:
among the darker individuals waiting upon him was one who, with
regard to the rest (most of them females), occupied a position of
intermediate authority.  His integuments closely resembled those of
the master, consisting of white, fine-textured tissues which
covered all but his head, his hands, and his feet; and in one point
he was unique: he had two pairs of eyes, one of them being external
and consisting of the same transparent, rock-like substance as the
mysterious cases of the chamber.

As luck would have it, Assa-ree and I entered this man's abode at a
moment when a dusky female came to call on the master.  To our
amazement, the master, ordering the assistant about in a most
peremptory manner, placed the female in a peculiar position in an
ingeniously constructed seat and looked into her mouth.  From his
behaviour I was inclined to think that he was going to osculate or
to regurgitate; but suddenly he inserted a claw of his fore-foot
into the open mouth of the female and shouted something to his
assistant.  The latter opened one of the transparent cases and took
from it a sinister-looking piece of apparatus[2] closely resembling
such tongs as certain aquatic members of the Articulata exhibit in
our own country.  This piece of apparatus he handed to the master
who brutally thrust it into the mouth of the female, seized with it
one of the bony plates used for mastication, and, with a powerful
wrench, pulled it out, the female giving a pitiful groan.
Profoundly stirred by the suffering of the victim of this
brutality, I gave Assa-ree the signal of retreat; and we made our
exit.


[2] Whenever dealing with man, Wawa-quee's consciousness became
purely visual and was transferred to me in that form.  I recognised
this "piece of apparatus", of course, as the sort of tongs or
forceps used by dentists to extract teeth.  Whenever such a case
arises in which I understand what the ant does not, I shall, in
what follows, use italics.  E.


Returned to our temporary dwelling, I shut myself up in the queen's
chamber.  I will not dwell on my feelings but merely give the
results of my analysis of the facts.  He whom I have called the
master had clearly enslaved the one whom I have called the
assistant, as well as the other members of his clan.  It was not a
case of co-operation such as exists among ants.  What the nature
and method of this enslavement might be remained unexplained; in
physical power the slave was manifestly superior to his master.
But he was of a different variety of the species man; his racial
relation to the master was approximately that of ourselves to the
Oecodomas, or the reverse.  It was hard to say which; for now the
one, now the other of these two seemed the less civilized.

It will perhaps be best simply to relate what happened next and to
let the curious draw their own conclusions.  I will frankly own
that I was little inclined to pursue my studies in this particular
abode of man; and I should have left well enough alone had I not
been forcibly carried back there.

I made up my mind to take Bissa-tee, the zoologist, into my
confidence.  As far as Assa-ree was concerned, I had no intention
of letting her look too deeply into my thoughts and secrets.  I
knew her to be at heart impatient of my control; and I knew it to
be impossible for her to appreciate my motives.  Care for my
personal safety was dictated, of course, not by fear for myself,
but by my solicitude for the fate of the whole expedition the
success of which depended on the preservation of that unity of
direction which centred in myself.  I have too often shown that
death holds no terror for me to have to give a cheap exhibition of
courage when discretion is clearly indicated by the circumstances.

Bissa-tee was one of those big, magnificent, and boisterous ants
who will rap their thorax with one antenna while they touch yours
with the other, and who will breeze in and out of a chamber with a
hearty nod; so that everyone mistakes them for commonplace ants and
thinks she knows all about them because they seem to carry their
heart upon the anterior joint.  I knew that all this was mere
pretence and that she knew excellently well, as her name, too,
signifies, how to keep her own counsel.  That was the reason why we
were friends.

In order to make sure that we could not be spied upon, I led her
far from our temporary abode.  I took a north-east path which led
close to the wide and open clearing that surrounded the human
village.

But I had hardly begun to explain my perplexities when I was
interrupted.  We found we were not alone in this margin of the
forest.  The ground shook with the rapid and ponderous tread of
some large animal, presumably a mammal.  Both Bissa-tee and myself
instantly ceased from all motion and stood rigid, every muscle
taut.  And then, what was my horror when I espied the very
assistant of the master man jumping about close by under the trees,
bending over and reaching for things on the ground!  My first
impulse was to hide; but the second impulse was of curiosity.  And
this second impulse, which I followed, seemed, for the moment, to
prove our undoing; for suddenly the man was right upon us.

To our amazement, he reached for us, not with the long, slender
toes of his fore-feet, but with a pair of tongs.  Before I knew
what was happening, he had grasped me by my pedicel (of all places
to catch an ant: the pedicel!), lifted me and dropped me into a
hollow cylinder of the rock-like, transparent substance repeatedly
mentioned.  Bissa-tee promptly followed me; and, to our horror, we
found ourselves confined with a score or two of huge Eciton
Hamatum, our worst enemies.  The fear of the Eciton is so inbred in
us Attas, I presume, that, faced with them, we are capable of
exertions which under ordinary circumstances would be beyond our
powers.  Both Bissa-tee and myself were, a moment later, clinging
to the rough paper cover of the cylinder.  Ordinarily such a leap
of at least fourteen antlengths would have been impossible to any
Atta.  Yet the imprisoned Ecitons were themselves too bewildered to
pay the slightest attention to us.

Meanwhile our bearer was wildly shaking us up and down: apparently
he was running in his clumsy human way, using only his hind-feet.

Before we had had time to reflect, he had removed the cover from
the cylinder and was shaking us out on a flat white surface of
extraordinary smoothness.  There, Bissa-tee and myself, together
with fifty Ecitons, were instantly rushing about in the wildest
confusion.  The surface was circular and surrounded by a moat
twelve antlengths wide and filled with water.  At last I stopped to
recover my breath; and as I did so, I looked about.  Incredibly, we
were in that precise chamber where Assa-ree and I had witnessed the
maltreatment of the human female.

Still more incredibly, that same female was lying like one dead
stretched out on a raised platform close to the glistening plateau
on which we were.  Her forefoot was bared to the upper joint and
exhibited a wide, bleeding gash twenty antlengths long and gaping,
with its ragged edges separated by at least four antlengths.  How
such a gash can be produced I have of course no means of telling.
But, as I said, red blood was trickling from it.

Perhaps I should explain here what I came to investigate at a much
later stage.  Man's blood, like that of all mammals, is confined in
large, tubular vessels and cannot flow outside of them.  If he is
wounded and one of these vessels or veins is severed, the blood
escapes instead of simply changing its course and flowing around
the wound as it does with us; and with its escape life itself ebbs
away.

A moment later I saw the master hurrying about; he shouted
something to his assistant, and the assistant answered.  Again I
should, perhaps, anticipate and explain that man produces sounds,
not by means of a stridula, but by sending a current of air
forcibly over two chord-like membranes concealed in his throat.

The master approached the female, knelt by her side, and laved the
wound; the assistant stood by, armed with a forceps.  By this time
curiosity had completely conquered my panic.  The Ecitons were
still rushing wildly about.  No greater proof, I believe, can be
found of the superiority of the Atta than the fact that Bissa-tee
had coolly selected a point of vantage from which she watched the
proceedings; and her I now joined on the bank of the moat.

Having finished the task of laving the wound, the master, by a
gesture of his forelimb, gave the assistant a signal; and the
latter, bending over the platform, picked up a giant soldier
Eciton, applying the forceps to her pedicel.  I distinctly remember
how this individual opened her formidable and menacing sickle-jaws
as though to attack her captor.  There is one thing to be said for
the Eciton: she knows no fear; she is the personification of blind
and bold fury; but she is nothing else; she is a mere fighting
machine.

As it turned out, this gesture of menace was exactly what the human
wanted to produce.  With a touch much more gentle than I should
have expected him to be capable of, the master took the forceps
from his assistant; and while, with the extended toes of his free
forelimb, he pressed the ragged edges of the gaping wound in the
human female's arm together, he approached, with the other, the
head of the Eciton.  At once the ant buried her jaws, on both sides
of the red line, in the human flesh and drew them close together;
whereupon the master slipped his soft toes back by two ant-lengths
and returned the forceps to his assistant.  A second Eciton was
picked up; and the proceeding repeated; then a third and a fourth.

Up to this point I had been so fascinated by what was going on that
I had no eyes for anything else.  Now I cast a fleeting glance at
Bissa-tee.  To my inexpressible astonishment I saw, behind her, in
an attitude of bold and close scrutiny, my ever-present rival Assa-
ree.  Where did she come from?  I feel convinced that, like
ourselves, she had been caught by mere chance; but, when
questioned, later on, she had the effrontery to assert, though her
boldness was disguised under an air of almost apologetic modesty,
that she had intentionally allowed herself to be captured in order
to find out what these Ecitons were wanted for.  How she came to be
in the very locality which I had sought in order to escape her
espionage, she has never seen fit to explain.

I had not yet completely recovered from what amounted almost to
indignation at her presence when Bissa-tee touched me with her
antenna.  The process of closing the wound had been finished.
Twenty-five Ecitons had buried their jaws in the human flesh and
were holding the edges of the wound together.

And now comes the most amazing thing of all: a thing so horrible
that I can barely bring myself to relate it.  The master had risen
and was bending over the wounded arm.  In one fore-foot he held a
new instrument, a pair of scissors, of the same metal as the
forceps.  With this he severed the heads of the Ecitons from their
bodies, allowing the latter to fall to the ground.  I nearly
swooned.  The only thing which preserved me from so ignominious a
breakdown was the consciousness that, over Bissa-tee's tense body,
Assa-ree's median eye was fastened upon me, with an expression of
diabolic curiosity.

A few moments went by during which I was aware of nothing but my
own efforts not to give way.  But suddenly I saw the master bending
over our platform, forceps in one, and the hollow cylinder in the
other fore-limb.  He was picking up and re-imprisoning the
remaining Ecitons.  Before I knew what to do in order to escape, he
had picked up Bissa-tee, but to my surprise he flung her to the
ground; apparently he did not think her suitable for his purpose.
I was just on the point of running blindly when I also felt myself
grasped.  As he lifted me close to his eye, I saw Assa-ree clearing
the moat in a single, magnificent leap.  Clearly, fear gave her,
too, strength beyond the measure ordinarily bestowed on ants.  The
next moment I was, like Bissa-tee, flung to the ground.

I hastened to escape through the door; but instantly Bissa-tee was
by my side and detained me.  I hardly know how I managed to attend
to what she was endeavouring to convey to me.  Never before had
such an opportunity offered to measure the tenacity of life in
Ecitons: since we had forbidden vivisection by law, the only
specimens on which she and her colleagues had been able to work had
been such as were mutilated in war; and neither she nor anyone else
had ever succeeded in getting hold of beheaded specimens the exact
hour of whose execution had been known; nor had these specimens
ever been free from other mutilations and wounds.  These Ecitons,
on the other hand, were in magnificent health, apart from the fact
that they had lost their heads; and so zoology must claim them, not
only in order to determine the protoplasmic vitality of the Eciton
body as such, deprived of the intelligent direction of the brain
and even of the very possibility of adding to the vital force by
feeding it; but also in order to study the distribution of
instincts between body and head.  Surely, she argued, when the head
is removed, activities can be directed only by the dorsal and
ventral ganglia.  Help me, she added, to drive these decapitated
specimens, or at least some of them, to our station where I shall
provide an orderly as a guard for each individual; and zoology will
owe you an everlasting debt.

I could not help admiring this devotion to science which caused
Bissa-tee entirely to forget the danger she was in, for she had
stopped me in the very door through which numbers of humans were
now passing, lifting and bringing down their huge flat feet; to be
caught between them and the rock-like floor would have been
equivalent to a cataclysm in nature.  Nevertheless, I was impatient
with her; clearly, this was the moment to think of our own safety
first of all.

But at that juncture Assa-ree appeared, her attitude marking a
peculiar mixture of jaunty nonchalance and solicitude in our
service.  As though to set an example of reckless disregard of
danger, she came through the very centre of the wide exit; and when
the assistant appeared behind her, she even stopped till the
latter's hard and smooth hind-foot was directly above her before,
with a dexterous and elegant twist, she evaded the descending
destruction.

The remainder of this adventure is chiefly of interest to
specialists; and a detailed report has been given on scent-tree
number 319 to which I must refer the curious.  Here I confine
myself to the bald statement that we succeeded in securing twelve
of the decapitated Ecitons whom Bissa-tee kept confined during the
remainder of our stay at the Narrows; when we left, she took them
along under escort.  Those whom we did not thus capture returned to
their army, proving thereby that the homing instinct is independent
of the contact-odour sense; though with this restriction that the
individuals captured apparently never discovered that they were not
with an army of their own kind.  In fact, when we set out again,
they seemed quite content to travel with us and even anxious never
to stray: travelling was, of course, the natural mode of their
lives.  It was sometimes ludicrous to see how they begged for food,
palpating us with imaginary antennæ and lifting the stumps of their
necks as though they were opening shadowy mouths.  Never have I
seen a more striking symbol of such systems of philosophy as try to
explain the universe by means of intuition.  Anna-zee, our
botanist, indulged in inexhaustible mirth at the expense of these
living corpses.  They lived for 39 days and kept up sufficient
energy to continue marching to within the last but one day of their
lives.  At no time did they betray signs of conscious suffering--
proof conclusive that the seat of suffering is the brain, and
likely the imagination.[3]


[3] See also Tenacity of Life in Ants, by A. M. Fielde, Scient.
Amer., 1893.  E.


VI


The most interesting, not to say alarming feature of this adventure
consisted in the proof which it afforded of the fact that there
were Ecitons about.  It was, of course, one of our tasks to secure
what information we could bearing on the life, the habits, and the
anatomy of these ants.  But, seeing that their observation was
fraught with considerable danger, I had made up my mind to leave it
over to the end.  We could not afford to run the risk of being
greatly reduced in number right from the start; and that was the
reason why we had so far travelled by night.  For Ecitons, though
almost blind, hunt in daytime.  In view of their at least partial
blindness, this could not be explained by conditions of light.  In
fact, there is one race of Ecitons which is absolutely blind
(Eciton Cæcum); and these hunt with the same efficiency, if not a
greater one as those endowed with a vestige of sight, and, what is
more important, also in daytime.  They are almost completely
hypogæic; and when they have to cross open rocky stretches where
not even a cover of dead leaves is available, they construct
superterranean galleries, using a sort of masonry in the
construction of which they are highly adept.  Since this race of
the blind Ecitons is the one which is geographically most widely
distributed, it can readily be inferred, as Bissa-tee pointed out,
that the whole trend of evolution, within that genus, must be in
the direction of blindness: for some reason or other blindness
favours, instead of handicapping, them in the struggle for
existence.  The fact, then, that Ecitons hunt in daytime must be
explained by conditions of temperature rather; and this led me to a
further conjecture.  Our geographers had already reported that,
though our progress in a south-north direction had so far been
small, the whole trend of the Narrows being westward, there had
already been a slight lowering of the mean temperature, perceptible
only to trained observers and by the most delicate physiological
tests.  The spread between the temperatures at noon and midnight
had also increased.  This led me to think that, since sooner or
later our route would bend more and more to the north, this
lowering of the mean temperature would become more and more
pronounced.  If, then, the difference between day and night was
even here sufficient to force the Ecitons to go into bivouac at
night, it seemed highly probable that, as we proceeded north, the
limit of their distribution would be reached as soon as the daytime
temperature fell to a low enough level, at least occasionally, to
prevent their being abroad: from then on only did I think it safe
to travel during the day.

When, therefore, our work at this station was finished and we all
had sufficiently recovered from the effects of fatigue and hunger,
I set the hour of departure once more for sunset.  To omit all
detail, we thus marched for another 27 nights.  Many minor
observations were made by geographers, zoologists, botanists and
meteorologists; and these were reported every morning before we
went into our cluster camp.  When they were of special interest or
too long to be committed to memory, Adver-tee was employed to
record them on trees marked in some conspicuous way, so that we
could pick them up again on our way home.  I often admired the
skill with which Adver-tee could compress a great deal of meaning
into very brief scents.

And then, quite unexpectedly, we met with an extraordinary
obstacle: the whole continent was cut in two by water.  It was
not a river, for the banks were straight and perpendicular,
unmistakably artificial, and of smooth stone.  As we found later,
it was a work constructed by man: an engineering feat not unworthy
of ants.  For the moment, however, we did not know that; or I
should at once have concluded that no doubt ways and means had been
provided for crossing this canal.  As it was, there was nothing to
do but to go into quarters.  This was the first place where we
resolved to excavate a cache or burrow in which to plant our own
fungi.  In this, our chief difficulty arose, of course, from the
fact, which I had foreseen, that, we having no minims along to weed
and cultivate the plantations, the latter were at once overrun with
great masses of unsuitable and even poisonous fungi; and this
necessitated burrows of a size quite out of proportion to our
numbers.  Before our present necessities were relieved by the
accident to be related, the new hill had reached the following
dimensions: superficial diameter 768 antlengths, depth 380
antlengths; number of chambers averaging 60 antlengths in one and
20 in another direction, 94.

Meanwhile large adventitious bodies of locally represented ants
were pressed into service by Assa-ree whose methods I did not care
to enquire into; the end was welcome even if the means were not.
For it was clear that this great obstacle could be overcome only by
a daring feat of our own: we had resolved to fill in this canal or,
failing in this, to throw a dam across it.  For a whole moon an
ever-increasing multitude (they must in the end have amounted to
many hundreds of thousands) was employed in rolling pellets of clay
over the edge of the embankment.  Two shifts of workers prepared
the pellets; and two relays were employed in dumping them, so that
the work went forward without intermission, day and night.  We soon
came to the conclusion that this great task would take us a year
and 200 days to accomplish.

And then an almost incredible event solved our difficulties for us.
One night it was reported to me that a floating monster carrying
many men was coming down from the north.  I investigated at once
and found this monster to consist of a huge aquatic beetle
resembling in more than one way a firefly.  Every Atta is, of
course, familiar with the purely aerial fireflies of our country;
but the size of this monster was almost unbelievable: it measured
in length at least 7,000 antlengths.

Now, as this monstrous beetle came floating along, with a humming
noise, and as it was on the point of passing our station--where all
those of us who were endowed with eye-sight stood aligned on the
bank of this enormous ditch--the labour which we had so far
expended in the endeavour to dam the canal bore fruit in an
entirely unexpected manner: the beetle got caught between the far
bank and our talus which by this time reached out into the water to
a distance of 350 ant-lengths.  The firefly came to with a terrific
crash which dislocated the masonry of both banks.  The whole
floating population of men, borne along by the monster, was knocked
off their feet; and even we were overthrown by the impact.[4]


[4] See New York Daily Mail of April 16, 1924 for a report of this
accident from the human side.  The paper ascribes it to a land-
slide.  E.


Again I must give Assa-ree her due.  Very few minutes had elapsed
before she reported to me that she had established a practicable
route to the other side.  I had to trust her blindly; for
obviously, if we were to profit by this extraordinary accident, no
time was to be lost.  Beings who were able to construct such works
as this canal and to tame such insects as this beetle would soon
find means to extricate themselves.  By one powerful emission of
the proper scent I issued the order to assemble and to obey Assa-
ree in every point.

It was night; and the task of crossing was dangerous in the
extreme.  But Assa-ree had provided for everything.  Along the
whole route, with the exception of a few gaps of which I am going
to speak, she had stationed huge, alien ants holding in their jaws
small fireflies of the kind familiar to us; and these emitted a
pale, greenish light.  They had already been employed to carry on
the night-work.  Now they illumined a narrow, precipitous path
through the ruined masonry of the hither bank; and when,
ultimately, we reached the far bank, they were similarly lined up
along its acclivity.  Assa-ree was here, there, and everywhere.

Bissa-tee, Anna-zee, Lemma-nee, and myself led the way, Bissa-tee
in her intrepid manner ahead of us all.  We wound our way down
almost to the water's edge, first through a rough and almost
impassable gap in the displaced rocks, then over the talus
constructed by our gangs.  As we approached the water, Assa-ree
appeared, enjoining caution.  The road abutted above the water at a
point where, opposite, a round, circular hole gaped like a trachea
in the flank of the beetle.  The gap, of perhaps 120 antlengths,
was bridged by a yielding and excessively narrow, but tough and
resistant sort of cable the histological nature of which we had no
time to examine.  In itself it would have admitted of no other
passage than in single file.  But Assa-ree signalled a halt and
issued an order.  Whereupon several hundred ants poured on to this
bridge; these fastened themselves sideways to the yielding fibres
and thereby trebled its width.  At a further signal from Assa-ree
we proceeded, marching four abreast.  In the opening of the
trachea, Assa-ree was waiting for us.

What we walked over next, inside of the beetle, is beyond my
guessing.  It was a tremendous task; for we had no light here; but
Assa-ree, keeping ahead of us, scented the road.  At last we came
out on the far side; and it seemed that we had escaped one danger
only to succumb to another.  Here there was no bridge.  We were 200
or 300 antlengths above the water, and the bank was as far away.

Assa-ree, however, ran down the perpendicular flank of the beetle
and out on the water.  As we discovered when we followed her, she
was supported from below by a chain of ants clinging together, six
or eight abreast, and submerged in the chilling flood.  Never in my
life had I touched anything as cold as this water; but for good or
evil we were committed; and we struggled on.

Assa-ree left us; nor was there any need for further guidance; the
moment we set foot on solid ground, the fireflies lighted us again;
and we were soon on top of the bank.  It took the greater part of
the night for the army to cross; and all the time there was a noisy
and mysterious commotion going on among the humans on or within the
beetle.  When the last of us had landed, the grey of dawn was
showing in the east; and still there remained one task: the living
float of ants had to be withdrawn from the water; for we could not
think of leaving them who had been the means of our accomplishing
the crossing to drown in the icy floods of this tremendous cut.

However, this was soon done, and all of them were taken, in the
mandibles of our carriers, to a wooded patch west of the canal
where the rising sun restored all but one to consciousness and
normal life.

Such was the great adventure of the human canal.

It came as an anticlimax when our geographers, shortly after,
discovered that this cut was, at regular intervals, provided with
gates over which we could have crossed without any trouble.  At any
rate, this discovery settled all my worries with regard to our
eventual return.


VII


Thus, for another five months, we proceeded by night marches.  How
the army fared I am unable to say; I did not enquire.  As for
ourselves, the High Command, we never ate for weeks and weeks.  It
was a hardship which we bore cheerfully for the sake of the cause.

As I have hinted, even our night marches yielded a rich harvest of
observations, geographical, meteorological, botanical and
zoological.  My conjecture that the trend of the continent would be
more and more northward was soon confirmed; and though the fact
might have admitted of various interpretations, the mean
temperature kept falling.  Many circumstances led us to think that
the continent was widening out, and this was corroborated when, a
little later, the whole country was mapped.  Naturally, the farther
we were at any point from the sea, the greater would be the spread
between day and night.

At last we came to a country where the whole character both of the
flora and the fauna underwent a subtle change.  Thus, of 356
nocturnal species of Blattoid beetles observed in our own country--
a group which had so far varied very little, by the occasional
disappearance of this or that species and the addition of a few
others--we were almost suddenly, i.e., within, let me say, a week's
march, able to locate only 41; and the remainder of the new
Blattoid fauna consisted of species not found before.  The close
biological connection which, so far, had existed between our own
country and the region traversed was reduced to a slender thread.

This led me to a new conjecture which I wanted to verify; and so I
proclaimed another halt.  We were at the northern end of a noble
sheet of water from the south end of which a not inconsiderable
river flowed roughly eastward.  The surface, along the east shore
of this lake, was less rugged.  It was clothed by magnificent
forests containing many trees new to us.  Man was more common here,
too; but I was inclined to disregard this source of danger.  To a
lesser extent, another consideration decided me, namely the
desirability of recuperating our strength; I knew from experience
that a total abstinence from food impaired our mental powers when
prolonged beyond six or seven moons.[5]


[5] Miss Fielde demonstrated the limit of time during which maxims
live without food to be 9 months; though queens, of course, go
without food in the natural course of events even longer.  E.


Now this district abounded with Attiine ants of a variety hitherto
unknown to us.  I have made bold to name them after myself Atta
Wawaqueensis.  And these ants had not attacked us.[6]


[6] It is, of course, impossible for a human myrmecologist to
identify this species exactly.  The "noble sheet of water" I was at
first inclined to identify with the Lake of Nicaragua.  But the
geographical details given point to a more northern location.
Every detail applies to the north end of Fonseca Bay, on the
Pacific coast.  But Fonseca Bay is salt; and I should expect this
important fact to be mentioned by so accurate a recorder as Wawa-
quee.  E.


I, therefore, deputed Azte-ca, head of the department of
communications, to make an attempt at establishing friendly
relations with them.  In this she was entirely successful; and the
whole High Command was most hospitably received in a huge city of
these ants where we were assigned separate chambers and separate
fungus-gardens.  We had hardly entered our quarters when Her
Majesty Angza-alla-antra sent to command my presence; and in a
brief interview she insisted on having me with her during our stay,
as her personal guest.  Though I feared that this honour would in a
measure restrict my freedom of movement, I could not very well
refuse it; royalty will be served.

Before I say any more about our hosts, I will briefly mention that,
as soon as we were established, I despatched Lemma-nee, our leading
geographer, with a dozen of her associates, on a survey of this
part of the continent; and I will anticipate here by stating that
this continent was found to have narrowed again and that, further,
a transverse valley forming a climatic barrier was found to stretch
right across it, from coast to coast, with a pass crossing the
mountains at an elevation of little more than 67,000 antlengths.
This confirmed my conjectures completely.

Meanwhile, in the absence of this sub-expedition, we lived
comfortably with our hosts, the Wawaqueenses.  For the benefit of
her subjects Her Majesty asked me in the most flattering manner to
deliver a number of scentures on our travels and their scientific
results.  The reception of these scentures was all that could be
expected; but it struck me that those delivered on the more
adventurous parts held a greater appeal than those dealing with
purely scientific results.  This interest in mere narrative, I
might say right now, became more and more pronounced as we
proceeded north.  If I do say it myself, though my own interests
are exclusively scientific, I seem to have the gift of carrying
away the masses by my scents.

Particularly vivid is my memory of the enormous tension which took
hold of the multitudes assembled on the slopes of the mound when I
related the adventure with the wounded she-man.  From all that vast
assembly--when I came to the more dramatic parts--not a scent was
to be perceived till I reached the moment of our escape.  I must
say that, while delivering this scenture, I was standing at the
very edge of one of the main entrance craters.  When I reached that
point, however, I was nearly thrown into a faint by a most powerful
scent proceeding from behind and below me.  Although the same scent
was emitted by the countless thousands ranged in front of me, this
particular scent was more concentrated than that of all the others
combined.  Startled, I half turned; and down there, a few ant-
lengths below the surface, I caught sight of Her Majesty Angza-
alla-antra who, accompanied by only a few of her favourite maxim
attendants, was listening in.

Later on she reproved me for never scenting to her privately in
such a fascinating way.  I apologized, stating that I had thought
she would prefer to be instructed rather than entertained.  But she
gave me such a scent, combined with a gentle touch of her antennæ,
that I could not defend myself against the suspicion that her
feelings for me were different from those of mere respect and
friendship.  This suspicion became a certainty when, soon after, I
being alone with her, she hinted to me in the most delicate but
somewhat agitated way, her emotions betraying themselves by the
trembling of her gaster, that, alas, she was not happy.  When I
looked up, she added, in a scarcely perceptible scent, that at this
moment she had only two regrets.  I could not but notice that she
wanted to be urged to divulge what they were; and though I felt
most uncomfortable, I scented to her that, having honoured me above
all ants by going so far in her avowals, I should henceforth live
in tortures unless she scented me all.  She seemed to languish for
a while; but at last she hung her head; and I had the greatest
difficulty in catching her next scents which were to this effect:
she wished, firstly, that she were not yet dealated; and, secondly,
that I were a male.  I knew well what, on such an occasion,
etiquette prescribes at home; but I trembled lest Wawaqueensic
custom differed considerably from our own.  Yet I could not remain
inactive.  I approached her in the humblest way and offered
osculation; to my surprise I found it was regurgitation she wanted;
and fortunately I could serve her in that, too.  Having received
it, she seemed on the point of fainting; and she weakly waved her
antennæ to intimate her desire to be left alone.

But it is time that I return to the sub-expedition sent out under
the command of our geographer-in-chief.  This sub-expedition had
now been absent for over a month, and, the country swarming with
Ecitons, I was beginning to worry about its fate.  Lemma-nee was
one of those small, inconspicuous maxims whose most prominent
characteristic is an excessive modesty.  To see her, nobody would
have thought her capable of daring or endurance; yet she possessed
both these qualities in the highest degree.  I knew that, if her
task could be carried out at all, she would carry it to a
successful issue.  But the very nature of that task demanded
daylight travel; for angles had to be taken to distant points;
base-lines had to be laid off; descriptions of surface conditions
had to be secured without travelling over every square-inch of
ground.  Elevations, it was true, she could secure by means of her
living barometers whose protoplasmic flow had previously been
ascertained under all sorts of atmospheric conditions.  Whatever
data could be secured without trigonometric calculations had all
along been recorded.

I made up my mind to wait one more half moon and, if we received no
news, to send out a relief party in search of her.

This interval having elapsed, I called a council which I invited
Assa-ree to attend.  Little as I wished to be beholden to her, she
had given too many proofs of her resourcefulness for me to leave
her out of account.

At this meeting Bissa-tee did most of the scenting.  She proposed
that the search party should be small and that it must consist of
ants whose eye-sight was especially acute.  For, she reasoned, the
country being infested by Ecitons, scent-rays emitted by Lemma-nee
and her party would be interfered with by the fecal odours of these
hostile tribes--odours so strong that they would drown out, by
night as well as by day, any signals given by Attas.  There
remained, then, only the sense of sight as a means of search.  It
implied daylight travelling; and a small party would be better able
to escape detection than a large one.  In a blundering sort of way
which made me quite impatient, she took it upon herself to name
those whom she considered best adapted for the work: Assa-ree,
herself, and me.

That, of course, settled the question.  Her reasoning was acute and
correct enough; and the remaining members of the council heaved a
scent of relief at being omitted from the list.  Assa-ree fixed her
central median eye on myself; and I could not even betray the
slightest hesitation.  I nodded; and the council adjourned.

We got ready at once; and after a touching farewell from Her
Majesty we set out on our perilous trip.  Details are wearisome.
Let it suffice that, for close on to a moon, we travelled criss-
cross over the country to the south and south-west of our station
without finding sign or trace of Lemma-nee and her party.  A
hundred times we had hair-breadth escapes from Ecitons.  It was a
life of unceasing agitation which Bissa-tee seemed to enjoy to her
heart's content.  But not everybody delights in breathless flight
from a powerful enemy.  Assa-ree behaved admirably; and when the
dangers surrounding us seemed, at the last, to admit of no further
escape, it was she who saved our lives, though I almost hated her
for it.  She was of that type which seems to have all her faculties
sharpened by circumstances which deprive others of their power of
thought.

This situation in which we finally found ourselves was as follows.
In a lofty forest of broad-leaved trees which allowed no ray of
sunlight to penetrate their foliage, so that there was no
undergrowth, we came head-on in contact with the scouts of an
Eciton army.  What made this possible was the fact that, throughout
this forest, the atmosphere was so heavy with the fecal odour often
referred to as to make any intensification imperceptible.

We retreated hastily; but in our flight we were taken between two
further armies advancing in such a manner as to converge upon
ourselves.  There seemed to be no chance of escape; if caught, I
knew we should be torn limb from limb and devoured.

Assa-ree had arrived at the same conclusion; but her infernal
resourcefulness did not leave her.

She bade us stop; and with one of her amazing jumps she disappeared
behind a tree.  Less than a second later she reappeared, a large
spider in her jaws.  This spider, to my momentary disgust, she
urged me, in an almost imperious manner, to grasp by her pedicel;
and I actually did so.  Once more she dis- and re-appeared with a
similar spider for Bissa-tee.  Then she beckoned us and hastened to
the only tree which had a branch growing out from the trunk at the
low height of perhaps 150 antlengths.  Here she dexterously caught
a third spider and then climbed up the trunk and out on the branch,
with her capture in her jaws.

I surmised that very likely she knew what she was about, though I
had not the slightest idea what it might be.

By this time we could not only scent one of the approaching armies
almost below us; we could also hear the twittering of the birds
which always follow these armies on their predatory marches; chief
among them being the ant-thrush wrongly so-called.

There we sat on the branch in a row, the three of us, watching.
The nearer of the threatening armies was coming from our right or
from the east; and as we peered out, the other column, approaching
from the west, suddenly swerved and disappeared in the undergrowth
south of us.

In a very few minutes the nearer army swarmed all around our tree.
There were hundreds of thousands of them; the total body was at
least 200 antlengths wide and ten times as long; and all these ants
were hurrying and scurrying in the utmost excitement and fury.
Wherever they advanced, they took immense numbers of insects by
surprise: crickets, grasshoppers, centipedes, wood-lice, beetles,
spiders, and others.  Every tree they passed at once swarmed with
smaller columns branching off from the main body.  I inferred that
even this limb on which we were would not protect us.  The insects
which they surprised indulged, in their mortal fear--for they well
knew their danger--in the most amazing antics.  Grasshoppers
started a series of desperate leaps, scores of antlengths in
height; but every time they touched the ground an Eciton, large or
small, fastened dexterously on to one of the great legs and, during
the upward spring, secured herself to femur or body.  Among these
were winged grasshoppers; and as they flew up, the birds hovering
over the column as camp-followers rushed forward and caught them in
their cruel beaks.  The grasshoppers that tried to save themselves
by leaping were undone by the very extravagance of their exertions;
for they soon tired and, whenever they rested for even a fraction
of a second, scores of Ecitons swarmed over them; and in a moment
their enormous jumping-legs were severed from their bodies.  All
these myriad insects were at once torn to pieces and cut into
fragments just small enough to be handled by the carriers who
rushed them to the rear of the column.  Though every single member
of the army was moving about at utmost speed, the motion of the
army as such was quite unhurried.

At last they arrived at the foot of the tree on which we were.
Close to the trunk, but fastened to the branch, hung the huge paper
nest of a species of wasps.  This nest was promptly invaded; and
while the adult wasps hovered about, humming angrily and in deathly
fear, the Ecitons ran through all the inner chambers, carrying off
the eggs and the larvæ and pupæ and young which they dropped to the
ground where they were at once picked up by the carriers.  Above
the branch there was a bird's nest, in a hole of the trunk where
another branch had decayed.  It was the nest of a trogon and
contained young birds.  This nest was invaded next; though the
adult bird at first picked off the advancing ants singly, it was
soon put to flight; and a minute or so later various-sized
fragments of the flesh of the young began to be dropped to the
ground from the edge of the hole.

So far, our branch had remained unexplored; but the column which
was returning from the bird's nest invaded it at last.

Up to this point, Assa-ree had coolly watched every motion of the
ants on the tree.  Now she gave a signal and carefully placed the
spider she was carrying on the very edge of the branch.  Promptly,
with all the signs of mortal fear, it attached itself to the bark
and, spinning out an extra-strong thread, began to drop.  Assa-ree
followed her, climbing down the thread which was still sticky and
so offered her feet an excellent hold.  Needless to say that both
Bissa-tee and myself did exactly as she did.  The spiders lowered
themselves to within thirty antlengths of the ground which was
covered by the excited and sanguinary hordes.  Assa-ree