^16 JUNGLE PEACE 



perfectly straight sides, which at the rim had 

 been gutted by the rain, so that they actually 

 overhung. Yet the ants which had half -climbed, 

 half -tumbled and rolled their way to the bottom 

 in the wake of their victims, now set themselves 

 to solving the problem of surmounting these 

 cliifs of loose, crumbUng grains, dragging loads 

 which, in most cases, were much heavier than 

 themselves. Imagine a gang of men set to 

 carrying bundles of one to two hundred pounds 

 up perpendicular cliffs twelve hundred feet in 

 height, and the task of the army ants is made 

 more vivid. So swiftly did they work and so 

 constantly shifted their formations and methods 

 of meeting and surmounting difficulties, that I 

 felt as I used when looking at a three-ring cir- 

 cus. I could perceive and record only a small 

 part of the ingenious devices and the mutual 

 assistance and sharing of the complicated condi- 

 tions which arose at every step. 



Among the frightened victims, even for those 

 endowed with excellent eyesight and powerful 

 flight, there was only hopeless confusion and 

 blind terror. Instead of directing their flight 

 upward, they drove from side to side. Those 

 whose leaps should have carried them out, sim- 



