360 
ANIMALS OF EGA. 
Chap. V. 
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 ownward-moving comrades with their 
antennae ; a proceeding which has been noticed in other 
ants, and supposed to be their mode of conveying intel- 
ligence. When I interfered with the column or ab- 
stracted an individual from it, news of the disturbance 
was very quickly communicated 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 con- 
clude were the grubs of some other species whose nests 
they had been plundering, the procession 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 t^iese 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 out- 
side 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 
