OBSERVATIONS OX AXTS 121 



waiting. I wonder what the scouts have found, what they have noted 

 and communicated in their mysterious way to the commander of this 

 supreme army. It is growing dark without and the scouts abroad 

 grow less numerous. One by one the stars appear and I wait as 

 anxiously as an expectant enemy for the morrow and the outcome of 

 the gigantic plan already formulating among those seething hordes in 

 the encampment. 



At dawn on the following day, I found the army at its work of 

 slaughter. Walking by the forest trail, I was suddenly arrested by 

 a strange sound. It w r as not the sharp noise of snake or lizard startled 

 by my approach, nor the scratching of some hungry ant-bird. It was 

 a faint, but steadily increasing crackling murmur, unlike all other 

 jungle sounds. 



Stopping to listen, with ear bent to the brush, my eye caught sight 

 of a line of warrior ants. Their heads were huge rounded knobs, 

 bearing curving mandibles far out of proportion to the remainder of 

 their bodies. Glancing back along this line of soldiers, I soon under- 

 stood the meaning of that strange cracking murmur, for there just 

 behind these pickets rolled the main hordes of the army ants. 



Hundreds and thousands, countless myriads of them rushing ahead 

 behind their leaders. Some were in rows, others in bands, chains and 

 semi-circles. Among them were warriors of two sizes, but these 

 were outnumbered a hundred to one by the workers of the tribe, who 

 rushed along with the others. 



Every blade of grass, every stone and twig and leaf was searched 

 and researched by these fierce creatures in their mad onward journey. 

 They came to a large stump and seethed up it in a solid mass like thick 

 flowing molasses ; up one moment, down the next and on to another 

 object, whatever it might be. Thousands of others mounted to the 

 leaves of flowers and the foliage of small trees, sending down a shower 

 of panic-stricken insects to the waiting crowds below. 



