ANT COMMUNITIES 



were continually dropping into their home trail, and 

 numbers of Gammas were filing to their gate in a sluggish 

 way. Not a recruit from either side was coming to the 

 field. The dead lay in little windrows where the tide of 

 battle had left them, or whither they had crawled to die, 

 or the rising breeze had borne them. Here and there 

 among them were ants still living but fatally hurt, 

 struggling to drag their mutilated bodies from the mass. 

 Even so, two enemies, when forced together in this grim 

 fellowship, would grip one another and roll and strain, 

 giving their waning strength to a last hostile tug. 



It was a not inapt reminder of after -battle scenes 

 among men. Only, there was no hospital corps separat- 

 ing the dead and bearing off the wounded; no surgeons 

 plying their ministry of bodily help and repair, nor 

 chaplains their ministry of spiritual consolation. Dead, 

 dying, and wounded were all alike abandoned by their 

 late comrades, a number of whom, on both sides, were 

 now gathered around the pats of butter and sugar which 

 I had vainly placed in hope to lure them from fighting. 

 The refection which they refused during the heat of 

 combat was eagerly accepted to refresh themselves after 

 the toils of strife. That, too, was a quite human-like 

 scene, for soldiers must eat and drink when the dreadful 

 stress of battle is eased. However, there was no at- 

 tempt by the living ants to feed upon the dead, as one 

 sees under other conditions. 



The state of the wounded was pitiful, an exhibit in 

 miniature of the dreadful aftermath of human battles. 

 For example, here was a warrior whose middle leg on one 

 side was sound, the hind leg cut off at the thigh, the 

 front leg at the trochanter a mere stump. On the 

 opposite side the hind and middle legs retained all the 



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