154 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
against you. This is what hundreds of leaf-cut- 
ting ants accomplish daily, when cutting leaves 
from a tall bush, at the foot of the bank near the 
laboratory. 
There are three dominant labor-unions in the 
jungle, all social insects, two of them ants, never 
interfering with each other’s field of action, and 
all supremely illustrative of conditions resulting 
from absolute equality, free-and-equalness, com- 
munalism, socialism carried to the (forgive me!) 
anth power. The Army Ants are carnivorous, 
predatory, militant nomads; the Termites are 
vegetarian scavengers, sedentary, negative and 
provincial; the Attas, or leaf-cutting ants, are 
vegetarians, active and dominant, and in many, 
ways the most interesting of all. 
The casual observer becomes aware of them 
through their raids upon gardens; and indeed the 
Attas are a very serious menace to agriculture 
in many parts of the tropics, where their nests, 
although underground, may be as large as a 
house and contain millions of individuals. While 
their choice among wild plants is exceedingly 
varied, it seems that there are certain things they 
will not touch; but when any human-reared 
flower, vegetable, shrub, vine, or tree is planted, 
