THE ATTAS AT HOME 173 



Attas — the leaf-cutting ants of the British Gui- 

 ana jungle. In front of me was a glade, about 

 thirty feet across, devoid of green growth, and 

 filled with a great irregular expanse of earth 

 and mud. Relative to the height of the Attas, 

 my six feet must seem a good half mile, and 

 from this height I looked down and saw again 

 the same inconceivably sticky clay of France. 

 There were the rain-washed gullies, the half- 

 roofed entrances to the vast underground for- 

 tresses, clean-swept, perfect roads, as efficient as 

 the arteries of Verdun, flapping dead leaves like 

 the omnipresent, worn-out scare-crows of cam- 

 ouflage, and over in one corner, to complete the 

 simile, were a dozen shell-holes, the homes of 

 voracious ant-lions, which, for passing insects, 

 were unexploded mines, set at hair trigger. 



My Atta city was only two hundred feet away 

 from the laboratory, in fairly high jungle, with- 

 in sound of the dinner triangle, and of the lap- 

 ping waves on the Mazaruni shore. To sit near 

 by and concentrate solely upon the doings of 

 these ant people, was as easy as watching a sin- 

 gle circus ring of performing elephants, while 

 two more rings, a maze of trapezes, a race track 

 ind side-shows were in full swing. The jungle 



