ORDER OF MARCH 



475 



traversing the open space, and ascending the opposite 

 decHvity. The length of the procession was from sixty 

 to seventy yards, and yet neither van nor rear was visible. 

 All were moving in one and the same direction, except 

 a few individuals on the outside of the column, which 

 were running rearward, trotting along for a short distance, 

 and then turning again to follow the same course as the 

 main body. But these rearward movements were going 

 on continually from one end to the other of the line, and 

 there was every appearance of there being a means of 

 keeping up a common understanding amongst all the 

 members of the army, for the retrograding ants stopped 

 very often for a moment to touch one or other of their 

 onward-moving comrades with their antennae ; a pro- 

 ceeding which has been noticed in other ants, and supposed 

 to be their mode of conveying intelligence. When I 

 interfered with the column or abstracted an individual 

 from it, news of the disturbance was very quickly com- 

 municated to a distance of several yards towards the 

 rear, and the column at that point commenced retreating. 

 All the small-headed workers carried in their jaws a little 

 cluster of white maggots, which I thought, at the time, 

 might be young larvse of their own colony, but afterwards 

 found reason to conclude were the grubs of some other 

 species whose nests they had been plundering, the pro- 

 cession being most likely not a migration, but a column 

 on a marauding expedition. 



The position of the large-headed individuals in the 

 marching column was rather curious. There was one 

 of these extraordinary fellows to about a score of the 

 smaller class ; none of them carried anything in their 

 mouths, but all trotted along empty-handed and outside 

 the column, at pretty regular intervals from each other, 

 like subaltern officers in a marching regiment of soldiers. 

 It was easy to be tolerably exact in this observation for, 

 their shining white heads made them very conspicuous 

 amongst the rest, bobbing up and down as the column 

 passed over the inequalities of the road. I did not see 

 them change their position, or take any notice of their 

 small-headed comrades marching in the column, and 

 when I disturbed the line, they did not prance forth or 

 show fight so eagerly as the others. These large-headed 

 members of the community have been considered by some 

 authors as a soldier class, like the similarly-armed caste 



