night before, suddenly was made plain as I watched. A critical time
was at hand in the lives of the all-precious larvae, when they could
not be moved--the period of spinning, of beginning the transformation
from larvae to pupae. 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 several thousand ants and a dozen or more groups
of full-grown larvae. 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 dozens of jaws gnawing all at once
was plainly audible. This unaccustomed, unmilitary labor produced a
quantity of fine sawdust, which was sprinkled over the larvae. I had
made a partition of a bit of a British officer's tent which I had used
in India and China, made of several layers of colored canvas and
cloth. The ants found a loose end of this, teased it out and unraveled
it, so that all the larvae near by were blanketed with a gay,
parti-colored covering of fuzz.

All this strange work was hurried and carried on under great
excitement. The scores of big soldiers on guard appeared rather ill at
ease, as if they had wandered by mistake into the wrong department.
They sauntered about, bumped into larvae, turned and fled. A constant
stream of workers from the nest brought hundreds more larvae; and no
sooner had they been planted and debris of sorts sifted over them,
than they began spinning. A few had already swathed themselves in
cocoons--exceedingly thin coverings of pinkish silk. As this took
place out of the nest,--in the jungle they must be covered with wood
and leaves. The vital necessity for this was not apparent, for none of
this debris was incorporated into the silk of the cocoons, which were
clean and homogeneous. Yet the hundreds of ants gnawed and tore and
labored to gather this little dust, as if their very lives depended
upon it.

With my hand-lens focused just beyond mandible reach of the biggest
soldier, I leaned forward from my insulated chair, hovering like a
great astral eye looking down at this marvelously important business
of little lives. Here were thousands of army ants, not killing, not
carrying booty, nor even suspended quiescent as organic molecules in
the structure of the home, yet in feverish activity equaled only by
battle, making ready for the great