84 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
immature larva; but there was left in the corner 
of the flat board a swarm of about one-quarter 
of the entire number, enshrouding a host of older 
larve. The cleaning zones, the cripples’ gather- 
ing-room, all had given way to new activities, on 
the flat board, down near the kitchen middens, 
and in every horizontal crack. 
The cause of all this strange excitement, this 
braving of the terrible dangers of fumes which 
had threatened to destroy the entire colony the 
night before, suddenly was made plain as I 
watched. A critical time was at hand in the lives 
of the all-precious larve, when they could not 
be moved—the period of spinning, of beginning 
the transformation from larve to pupe. This 
evidently was an operation which had to take 
place outside the nest and demanded some sort 
of light covering. On the flat board were sev- 
eral thousand ants and a dozen or more groups 
of full-grown larve. Workers of all sizes were 
searching everywhere for some covering for the 
tender immature creatures. ‘They had chewed 
up all available loose splinters of wood, and near 
the rotten, termite-eaten ends, the sound of doz- 
ens of jaws gnawing all at once was plainly audi- 
ble. This unaccustomed, unmilitary labor pro- 
