THE ARMY ANTS’ HOME TOWN 61 
frame, hall-way, room, ceiling, wall and floor, 
foundation, superstructure and roof, all were 
ants—living ants, distorted by stress, crowded 
into the dense walls, spread out to widest stretch 
across tie-spaces. I had thought it marvelous 
wher. I saw them arrange themselves as bridges, 
walks, hand-rails, buttresses, and sign-boards 
along the columns; but this new absorption of 
environment, this usurpation of wood and stone, 
this insinuation of themselves into the province 
of the inorganic world, was almost too astound- 
ing to credit. 
All along the upper rim the sustaining struc- 
ture was more distinctly visible than elsewhere. 
Here was a maze of taut brown threads stretch- 
ing in places across a span of six inches, with 
here and there a tiny knot. These were actually 
tie-strings of living ants, their legs stretched al- 
most to the breaking-point, their bodies the in- 
conspicuous knots or nodes. Even at rest and 
at home, the army ants are always prepared, for 
every quiescent individual in the swarm was 
standing as erect as possible, with jaws wide- 
spread and ready, whether the great curved ma- 
hogany scimitars of the soldiers, or the little 
black daggers of the smaller workers. And with 
