64 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
eight lines of army ants on the ground, converg- 
ing to the post at my elbow. Each was four or 
five ranks wide, and the eight lines occasionally 
divided or coalesced, like a nexus of capillaries. 
There was a wide expanse of sand and clay, and 
no apparent reason why the various lines of for- 
agers should not approach the nest in a single 
large column. ‘The dividing and redividing 
~ showed well how completely free were the col- 
umns from any individual dominance. There 
was no control by specific individuals or soldiers, 
but, the general route once established, the gov- 
erning factor was the odor of contact. 
The law to pass where others have passed is 
immutable, but freedom of action or individual 
desire dies with the malleable, plastic ends of the 
foraging columns. Again and again came to 
mind the comparison of the entire colony or army 
with a single organism; and now the home, the 
nesting swarm, the focus of central control, 
seemed like the body of this strange amorphous 
organism—housing the spirit of the army. One 
thinks of a column of foragers as a tendril with 
only the tip sensitive and growing and moving, 
while the corpuscle-like individual ants are 
driven in the current of blind instinct to and fro, 
