60 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
carefully at this mushroom growth which had ap- 
peared in a single night, and it was then that my 
eyes began to perceive and my mind to record, 
things that my reason besought me to reject. 
Such phenomena were all right in a dream, or 
one might imagine them and tell them to children 
on one’s knee, with wind in the eaves—wild tales 
to be laughed at and forgotten. But this was 
daylight and I was a scientist; my eyes were in 
excellent order, and my mind rested after a 
dreamless sleep; so I had to record what I saw in 
that little outhouse. 
This chocolate-colored mass with its myriad 
ivory dots was the home, the nest, the hearth, the 
nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and 
board of the army ants. It was the focus of all 
the lines and files which ravaged the jungle for 
food, of the battalions which attacked every liv- 
ing creature in their path, of the unnumbered 
rank and file which made them known to every 
Indian, to every inhabitant of these vast jungles. 
Louis Quatorze once said, “L’Etat, c’est moi!” 
but this figure of speech becomes an empty, 
meaningless phrase beside what an army ant 
could boast,—*La maison, c’est moi!” Every 
rafter, beam, stringer, window-frame and door- 
