A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 161 



which had a regular shepherd's crook at the top, 

 and if his adventures of fifty feet could have been 

 caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chap- 

 lin would have had an arthropod rival. It hooked 

 on stems and pulled its bearer off his feet, it ca- 

 reened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at 

 one place mixing up with half a dozen. A big 

 thistledown became tangled in it, and well-nigh 

 blew away with leaf and all ; hardly a foot of his 

 path was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I 

 watched him reach the nest, after two hours of 

 tugging and falling and interference with traffic. 



Occasionally an ant will slip in crossing a 

 twiggy crevasse, and his leaf become tightly 

 wedged. After sprawling on his back and vainly 

 clawing at the air for a while, he gets up, brushes 

 off his antenna?, and sets to work. For fifteen 

 minutes I have watched an Atta in this predica- 

 ment, stodgily endeavoring to lift his leaf while 

 standing on it at the same time. The equation 

 of push equaling pull is fourth dimensional to 

 the Attas. 



With all this terrible expenditure of energy, 

 the activities of these ants are functional within 

 very narrow limits. The blazing sun causes them 

 to drop their burdens and flee for home ; a heavy 



