THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 77 



thing of mine, or any part of my anatomy which 

 might come close enough, but otherwise stim- 

 ulated to activity only when they came across a 

 bit of rubbish from the nest high overhead. This 

 was at once seized and carried off to one of two 

 neat piles in far corners. Before night these 

 kitchen middens were an inch or two deep and 

 nearly a foot in length, composed, literally, of 

 thousands of skins, wings, and insect armor. 

 There was not a scrap of dirt of any kind which 

 had not been gathered into one of the two piles. 

 The nest was nine feet above the floor, a distance 

 (magnifying ant height to our own) of nearly 

 a mile, and yet the care lavished on the cleanli- 

 ness of the earth so far below was as thorough 

 and well done as the actual provisioning of the 

 colony. 



As I watched the columns and the swarm-nest 

 hour after hour, several things impressed me; — 

 the absolute silence in which the ants worked; — 

 such ceaseless activity without sound one asso- 

 ciates only with a cinema film; all around me 

 was tremendous energy, marvelous feats of 

 achievement, super-human instincts, the ceaseless 

 movement of tens of thousands of legionaries; 

 yet no tramp of feet, no shouts, no curses, no 



