WITH ARMY ANTS 



motley throng, some still obsessed with the sap- 

 per instinct, widening the trail, tumbling down 

 loose, dangerous grains. Some bore the first- 

 fruits of victory, small ants and roaches which 

 had been the first to succumb. These were car- 

 ried by one, or at most by two ants, usually with 

 the prey held in the jaws close beneath the body, 

 the legs or hinderpart trailing behind. In 

 this straddling fashion the burden was borne 

 rapidly along, an opposite method from 

 the overhead waving banners of the leaf- 

 cutters. 



With these came a crowd of workers, both 

 white and black-headed, and soldiers, all empty- 

 jawed, active, but taking no part in the actual 

 preparation of the trail. This second cohort or 

 brigade had, it seemed to me, the most remark- 

 able functions of any of the ants which I saw 

 during my whole period of observation. They 

 were the living implements of trail-making, and 

 their ultimate functions and distribution were 

 so astounding, so correlated, so synchronized 

 with the activities of all the others that it was dif- 

 ficult not to postulate an all-pervading intelli- 

 gence, to think of these hundreds and thousands 

 of organisms as other than corpuscles in a dy- 



