THE ARMY ANTS’ HOME TOWN 75 
the appearance of the fur of some terrible ani- 
mal—fur blowing in the wind from some un- 
known, deadly desert. Yet so cohesive was the 
entire mass, that I sat close beneath it for the 
best part of two days and not more than a dozen 
ants fell upon me. There was, however, a con- 
stant rain of egg-cases and pupa-skins and the 
remains of scorpions and grasshoppers, the resi- 
due of the booty which was being poured in. 
These wrappings and inedible casing were all 
brought to the surface and dropped. This was 
reasonable, but what I could not comprehend 
was a constant falling of small living larve. How 
anything except army ants could emerge alive 
from such a sinister swarm was inconceivable. 
It took some resolution to stand up under the 
nest, with my face only a foot away from this 
slowly seething mass of widespread jaws. But 
I had to discover where the falling larve came 
from, and after a time I found that they were 
immature army ants. Here and there a small 
worker would appear, carrying in its mandibles 
a young larva; and while most made their way 
through the maze of mural legs and bodies and 
ultimately disappeared again, once in a while the 
burden was dropped and fell to the floor of the 
