THE ARMY ANTS’ HOME TOWN 89 
reverts by way of contrast to the tiny ghosts 
of springtails flitting silently among the terrible 
living chambers of the army ants. 
On the following morning I expected to 
achieve still greater intimacy in the lives of the 
mummy soldier embryos; but at dawn every trace 
of nesting swarm, larve, pupe and soldiers was 
gone. A few dead workers were being already 
carried off by small ants which never would have 
dared approach them in life. A big blue mor- 
pho butterfly flapped slowly past out of the jun- 
gle, and in its wake came the distant notes— 
high and sharp—of the white-fronted antbirds; 
and I knew that the legionaries were again 
abroad, radiating on their silent, dynamic paths 
of life from some new temporary nest deep in 
the jungle. 
