THE ARMY ANTS’ HOME TOWN 83 
running column with a spray of ammonia and 
found that it created merely temporary incon- 
venience, the ants running back and forming a 
new trail. Formaline was more effective, so I 
sprayed the nest-swarm with a fifty-per-cent solu- 
tion, strong enough, one would think, to harden 
the very boards. It certainly created a terrible 
commotion, and strings of the ants, two feet long, 
hung dangling from the nest. The heart of the 
colony came into view, with thousands of eggs 
and larve, looking like heaps of white rice-grains. 
Every ant seized one or the other and sought 
escape by the nearest way, while the soldiers still 
defied the‘world. The gradual disintegration re- 
vealed an interior meshed like a wasp’s nest, 
chambered and honeycombed with living tubes 
and walls. Little by little the taut guy-ropes, 
lathes, braces, joists, all sagged and melted to- 
gether, each cell-wall becoming dynamic, now ex- 
panding, now contracting; the ceilings vibrant 
with waving legs, the floors a seething mass of 
jaws and antenne. By the time it was dark, the 
swarm was dropping in sections to the floor. 
On the following morning new surprises 
awaited me. The great mass of the ants had 
moved in the night, vanishing with every egg and 
