Читать книгу Consider Her Ways - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 3

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It has long been a question interesting both to the zoologist and the psychologist how to interpret the social life of certain members of the order Hymenoptera, In fact, scholastics and ethologists have fought some of their most memorable battles over this problem. On one side stood those who regarded instinct as a mere mechanism of unconscious and hereditary impulses; on the other, those who saw in it something closely approaching to plastic intelligence. In other words, according as the human-race conceit of the investigator was strongly or weakly developed, the behaviour of these insects, and especially of the ants, was placed either in contrast or in comparison with the behaviour of man.

The present book, I believe, will settle that question. The Formicarian author, whether writing of her own congeners or, as she occasionally does, of us humans, reveals a world of which, I venture to say, few men have ever dreamt.

But let me explain how the book came into my hands.

For decades I had been an amateur myrmecologist; myrmecology had been my hobby. My study of ants went back to a time when the science was just developing into something like a systematic survey; and, I being by training a classicist, it had taken its starting-point from such ancient observations as those of Pliny and Aristotle. In more recent times, footing on Latreille's and Mueller's investigations, men like Forel, Huber, Emery, and, quite lately, Wheeler had in the light of the evolutionary theory attacked the various problems presented by the mass of known fact; and while adding considerably to the foundations, both by observation in the field and by dissection under the microscope, they gave their special attention to the task of ethologic interpretation. Guided by the conclusions they had arrived at, I improved what opportunities I had of observing such species as were locally represented where I lived. Yet, until I met with the works of Bates and Belt, my interest remained casual. These two authors, who were not myrmecologists, properly speaking, and who, perhaps for that very reason, kept the wider connections of the subject more clearly in view, aroused in me, through the records of their observations, the desire to see a little more for myself; and since, while I remained at home, the demands on my time were always manifold, I made up my mind, a few decades ago, to devote a prolonged holiday to the purpose of hunting down one or two colonies of the leaf-cutter ant of inter-tropical America. I intentionally restricted the scope of my investigation to a single genus; nor had I, so far, any idea of furthering science; I merely wished to satisfy my own curiosity.

My choice of locality fell on Venezuela; and, during an otherwise uneventful passage from Cuba to La Guaira, I had the good fortune of falling in with an American planter naturalized in that country and living on the very edge of the tropical forest in the eastern part of the coastal plateau where he grew sugar-cane and coffee. On hearing of my plans he very hospitably placed his house at my disposal; and although I knew that Spanish-Americans will do so without dreaming of the possibility that they might be taken at their word, I thought it safe--he hailing by birth from Illinois--to accept his invitation as being meant sincerely. After landing at La Guaira, I accompanied him first to Caracas and then into the interior.

Since my purpose is not to write a book of general travel in the tropics but simply to explain how this book came into being, I will not expatiate upon the scenery or the flora and fauna of the country which many an abler writer has depicted for the curious reader. Suffice it to say that, arrived at my friend's plantation, I at once settled down to a monotonous routine. Daily I rose at five in the morning, before sun-up, and an hour later went to the margin of the jungle where I soon located three colonies of the species Atta Gigantea. About eleven I returned to the plantation and, after partaking of a refreshment prepared by my bachelor-host's Chinese servant, lay down in my hammock on the large, shady veranda which had been assigned to me as my part of the spacious house. At four o'clock, when the westering sun began to beat down less scorchingly, and when the often violent showers of the early post-prandial hours had somewhat cooled the air, I returned to my ant-hill to watch.

Often nothing worth recording happened for many days. Yet even uneventful hours served to establish a certain relationship between the ants and myself--a relationship which led to most extraordinary developments.

I had arranged a not uncomfortable seat by cutting the arm-thick stems of two hanging lianas close to the ground and twisting their ends together so as to form a sort of swing, out of reach of possible inroads of ants and other terrestrial insects.

Close by my aerial seat, a foot or so to the left--I faced south--led one of the beaten tracks of the colony which I had singled out as the largest. The main part of the hill which measured thirty feet in diameter and which consisted of the coalesced crater-entrances, each two inches across, to the subterranean burrows was a few yards to the south and to the right or west of myself. A second colony was established a hundred yards beyond the first; a third, as many rods to the south-east. My detailed observations remained restricted to the nearest one.

I always took a book along to read while I was perched on my seat; for, since things extraordinary happened rarely, it would otherwise have been tedious. I soon developed the power of subconsciously keeping an eye on the ants; not, of course, on individual members of the colony, but on their masses. Any unusual commotion at once focused my attention; and, laying down my book, I could concentrate on whatever happened.

I shall try to sketch the routine activities of these ants as they would have gone on had I not been present or had my presence been ignored.

The crowded craters of the hill always presented the spectacle of numberless multitudes of ants entering and issuing forth. There was no confusion; everything proceeded methodically; and continually order evolved out of a seeming chaos. The ants dispersed on the various paths radiating in all directions from the burrow. On the track which passed at my feet and which was worn to a marvellous smoothness, much more smoothly than human work could have made it, three currents could be distinguished. The total width of the path being about twenty inches, the central ten inches were covered by a dense stream of ants returning to the colony; each individual carried in its jaws, projecting perpendicularly upward and backward, a small, circular leaf-disk which gave its bearer the appearance of a medium-sized butterfly sitting with its wings folded up. These ants, however, were not sitting still. Each disk was nearly an inch in diameter while the ant carrying it was somewhat over half an inch in length. One author has compared the procession to Birnam wood advancing up the hill to Dunsinane. On both sides of this returning column there was a counter-current of out-going ants each about five inches wide; these ants, of course, went empty-handed or rather empty-jawed.

By and by I came to know that, besides the main entrances in those crater-like depressions in the mound, the colony had many other exits or approaches which rose slantwise from the subterranean cavities and opened to the surface at considerable distances from the hill, some as far as fifteen or twenty yards away. These were never used by the ants attending to the routine work. Such as I discovered I examined from day to day; and I found them sometimes open, sometimes closed. They served as ventilators to regulate the temperature in the brood chambers, besides affording exits and entrances to those who, for the moment, were not engaged in the routine work. In case of emergency, of course, all openings would have been used; but no such case came under my observation.

These ants do not by any means feed on the leaves which they cut. As Belt conjectured and Mueller proved, they use them as the substratum on which they grow their real food, a minute fungus which is carefully cultivated and forced under optimal conditions of temperature, moisture and illumination, or rather lack of illumination.

Whenever I followed the worker column, I found that they were operating at various and sometimes considerable distances from the colony. They would come to a point under a young tree or bush where the ground was strewn with the circular cuttings. Each ant picked up a disk and instantly fell into line in the central, returning column.

In the top of the tree, each leaf was tenanted by a worker who, holding on with her hind-feet as a sort of pivot, was slowly swinging around, making a circular cut with her scissor-jaws. When this cut was nearly completed, the ant still standing on the disk, the forefeet of the little worker took hold of the remainder of the leaf; and when the last connection was severed, the disk fluttered to the ground, the ant dexterously swung up on the blade and at once proceeded to make a new cutting. No leaf was left while enough of the blade remained to yield another disk of regulation size.

It would seem that such habits must be exceedingly destructive to the forest; but I found no evidence that it was. When I first came, the ants were working at a distance of sixty yards east of the colony. I instantly concluded that they preferred certain kinds of trees and went so far afield because their supply close to the hill was exhausted. But it was not so. Plenty of trees of the same species were to be found between the burrow and the scene of their cutting activities; and not one of them was dead. Even in our north, of course, a tree robbed of its foliage in early summer--by hail, let me say--will put forth a second crop, though a less abundant one; and if this growth remains undisturbed, the tree will recover. In the tropics, I reasoned, where the demarcations of the seasons are largely obliterated, such a process of recuperation would be possible at any time provided the tree is not at once despoiled again: perhaps, then, these ants did not return to the same tree till it had had time to make good the loss sustained? If this could be proved, it would go far to settle any doubt as to the truly agricultural principle on which they work; they would not be "mining" the forest but utilizing its surplus energies; just as man utilizes, without--in theory--impairing, the fertility of the soil.

A single fact seemed to stand in the way of this explanation. The human population which has had ample experience with these ants is emphatic in the assertion that it is useless to plant vegetables and fruit-trees; sooner or later these ants will find them; and they will despoil them again and again, till plants and trees are killed. That the ants might consciously discriminate against the plantations of man never suggested itself to me till the fact was sprung on me as a complete surprise when at last I entered into direct communication with them. Amazing as it is, these astonishing little creatures discourage the intrusion of man into the tropical forest with definite intention and purpose. They do not approve of man.

I never dug into the burrows of the colony. I felt I had no right to destroy their elaborate works just because I had the physical power to do so; and that, I believe, was one of the reasons why I was singled out for the mission with which I am entrusted.

But in order to give the human reader an adequate idea of the material side of the life of these ants, I shall quote the results of such investigations of others as confirmed my own conclusions. My chief authorities are Bates, Belt, Sumichrast, and Mueller.

If the weather is propitious, the leaf-cuttings are carried right into the upper chambers of the burrow. If, on the contrary, a shower has wetted them, they are dumped outside and left to dry. In the upper chambers, other workers, so-called mediæ who on account of their smaller size are better adapted for work in the crowded galleries, take charge of the leaves and cut them into microscopically small shreds which they work up into a loose, spongy mass. In this condition still smaller mediæ take them into the garden-chambers and suspend them from their vaulted roofs to serve as the soil for the growth of the fungus on which they feed. Their charge now passes from the mediæ to the minimæ whom their minuteness (they are less than an eighth of an inch in length, a thirty-secondth in width) enables to pass freely through their interstices; and theirs is the task of weeding and cultivating. All these activities are supervised by the maximæ who are sometimes erroneously called soldiers. Their chief characteristic consists in the relatively enormous size of their heads which contain brains of a corresponding development. This brain, I believe to be relatively the largest single organ of any living being known. The work of feeding and caring for the broods falls on the so-called callows or immature workers; while the purely sexual functions of reproduction, at least dimorphic reproduction, are the exclusive domain of the short-lived male and the long-lived perfect female or queen.

In order to round off this sketch, I add a brief outline of the history of a colony.

At a given time of year the young males and queens raised in the colony issue for their marriage flight. No queen mates with a male of her own colony. In every formicary hundreds of physiologically perfect individuals of both sexes are raised. The time for this marriage flight is carefully determined by the maxims; and, strange to say, it is, within narrow limits, the same for all colonies of a given district; so that, for a day or so, the air swarms with winged ants, many of them, and those the most vigorous ones, flying at great heights; while the vast majority perishes in the streams and pools of the country.

The fertilized queen--one fertilization fills the seminal receptacle for the life of the queen--at once locates the spot where she desires to found her colony. She excavates a short gallery and, at its end a small spherical chamber. Having done this, she closes the entrance through which she is never again to pass unless extraordinary disasters befall her colony. Next she dealates herself; i.e., she gnaws off her wings. This is necessary in order to bring about, within her tissues, those structural changes which enable her to feed her first brood--as mammals do--on the secretions of her body. At the same time she deposits in the small chamber a little ball of the fungus hyphæ or roots which she has brought from the parent nest, thus providing for the food of her future broods. Meanwhile her ovaries are maturing, and she begins to lay eggs. The hyphæ she manures with her anal secretions; and when the first brood hatches, she feeds them with the metabolized tissues of her hypertrophied organism. She herself can go without food for months at a stretch. Her first offspring consists exclusively of minims. They at once open the gallery; some of them continue the work of excavation, some issue forth and start to cut leaves. Since even their work, small as their number is, yields a surplus, the fungus-garden soon expands. The next brood is reared by these minims and fed with fungi; its members show the first differentiation in size; and the division of labour begins. The queen never works again: she lays eggs instead. In a year or two the colony exhibits all the forms which constitute the complete social organism, a large formicary of this species having been ascertained to harbour, in its eighth year, slightly under a hundred thousand individuals.

A good deal of controversial literature has been written to account for the seemingly automatic functioning of the ant-state. How does the queen know what to do? How do the first minims learn to go out and to cut leaves? On the whole, instinct has been held to explain it all. It is interesting to see, in the pages that follow, how much of man's activities ants ascribe to instinct. Instinct is a convenient word without real meaning which, for that very reason, serves admirably to veil the ignorance of those who use it. There can be no doubt any longer that, as with us, not instinct, but tradition and education furnish the true explanation of the facts: that much this book settles beyond question. The queen is elaborately prepared for her life-work while she still lives in the parent colony; and she, in turn, teaches the first minims. Instinct is supposed to function automatically and, by its very definition, to be infallible.¹ But any observer can verify the fact that ants make mistakes which they rectify. Belt has observed, and I can confirm the statement, that young workers will cut and bring to the burrow disks of the blades of grass which are unsuitable for the growth of the fungi. "Aberration of instinct!" cry the scholastics, explaining one meaningless term by another. If they would go to the trouble of watching, they would see that the very ants that made the mistake are forced to remove the grass and will never again bring it into the burrow.

¹ This is Wheeler's definition: "An instinct is a more or less complicated activity manifested by an organism which is acting, first, as a whole rather than as a part; second, as the representative of a species rather than as an individual; third, without previous experience; and fourth, with an end or purpose of which it has no knowledge."

Having thus introduced my human readers to their formicarian brethren, I resume my narrative. What I have so far described as the routine of these ants is simply what I should have seen had I myself been invisible or unscentable. As a matter of fact, however, my presence created right from the start a sensation.

When, on the first day, I approached somewhat closely, I could not but notice a certain degree of confusion in the lines on the path. There was a momentary delay in their progress, especially in the outgoing columns which spread in width; and this congestion was speedily propagated back to the burrow. The central, returning column, too, was retarded but after a second resumed its progress at an accelerated pace. More important, however, than either of these disturbances was the fact that, long before those who were passing me when I appeared could possibly have reached the burrow, a number of huge ants, measuring at least an inch in length, exclusive of antennæ and legs, and endowed with enormous triangular heads, apex down and base up, appeared in the openings of the formicary.

For a moment they lingered, surveying the scene; and I was much impressed with their air of deliberation, while their geniculated antennæ worked precisely like groping hands held up in the air. Although I was eight feet from the burrow, I saw distinctly the so-called stemmata or median eyes with which their heads were equipped in addition to the compound lateral bundles of ommatidia. These stemmata gave the giant ants a peculiar look, as though they wore spectacles; and that bestowed upon them an oddly intelligent air. I was reminded of Belt's remark, "The steady, observant way in which they stalk about and their great size compared with the others always impressed me with the idea that in their bulky heads lay the brains that directed the community in its various duties." This impression was strengthened when they came stalking up to the scene of the disturbance. There can be no doubt but that the news of my approach had spread with telegraphic speed, ahead of the returning column. For the fraction of a second these big ants gave their attention exclusively to me; but somehow they must have inferred that my intentions were not hostile; for in less than half a minute after their arrival order was restored in the triple procession: the routine work went on as before.

The maxims, however, did not at once return to the hill. They lingered and seemed to go into conference, touching each other with their antennæ, now at the head, now at the thorax, and even at various points of the abdominal segments.

My readers must figure themselves as being just within the margin of a tropical forest, its giant trees hung with the festoons of immense lianas. Travellers are emphatic in describing the interior of these forests as the gloomiest place on earth. On a quiet day, such as this was, a stealthy silence broods over the moist atmosphere and in the impenetrable shade of the lofty foliage, becoming all the more oppressive when it has occasionally been pierced by the unmelodious scream of an invisible bird. Nothing is so suggestive of panic and unreasoning fear as the thought of being lost, alone, in this vast cradle of terrestrial life.

That day, this feeling was intensified by the weird, incomprehensible scrutiny of these ants. Without analysing my feelings, without even being conscious of the background of hearsay knowledge from which they arose, I felt, almost as a physical presence, the fact that nowhere does life prey on life as ruthlessly as in these woods where fierce cats and serpents live on mammals, spiders on birds, and numberless insects on all things quick and dead. The extreme beauty of detail in the vegetation did not avail: I was in the grip of primitive disquietudes; I was being surveyed and appraised by alien eyes connected with an intelligence beyond my mental grasp.

I did what I had come to do quickly, almost nervously: I prepared the seat from which I intended to make my observations; and then I returned to the estancia, unable to subdue my shivers. A few hours of rest restored my equilibrium; and I laughed at the confusion into which I had been thrown by my first encounter with these ants.

When, next day, I resumed my post, I had a book along. This expedient proved successful; for it was several weeks before I felt again unbalanced. Meanwhile I watched while reading. A careless observer would henceforth not have noticed anything beyond the routine of the carrier columns. But I made it a point not to be careless. Whenever I mounted guard, two changes took place. One of the giant ants made her appearance at a point in the flank of the columns next to my seat. There she stalked up and down, up and down, in a stately, watchful way, over a distance of from twelve to twenty inches. Only once did I prove to myself that she had a definite function. Intrigued by her eternal vigilance, I made, on arrival, straight for the path as though to cross it. Instantly, the maxim having just appeared, the column broke, leaving a clear space where my foot would have descended. The movements were so minutely concerted that there could be no doubt of their being executed in pursuance of an order issued. When a half minute had gone by without my repeating the threat, the column re-formed with the same precision. The second change consisted in the appearance of another maxim on top of the wide, flat mound formed by the coalesced entrance craters. This ant stationed herself so as to be almost hidden in one of the slanting galleries, with nothing but her large triangular head protruding. I was reminded of a sniper in a trench or bomb-hole. She stayed as long as I stayed, never once moving or changing her position.

Thus weeks went by; and since nothing new ever happened, I began to concentrate more and more on my reading. The monotonous routine began to have a beneficial effect on my nerves; yet it seemed that, apart from this, nothing further could be gained by prolonging my stay. As I have said, I did not care to pursue my studies by destroying their city; others had done so before; the purposes of science had been served; and though this particular species, Atta Gigantea, had, to my knowledge, never been investigated in detail, I had no doubt that the burrow and the organization of the community varied in no appreciable degree from those on which authors had written.

In spite of all that, there was a strange fascination about my work. I was convinced that these thousands upon thousands of ants that filed along the path had come to know me and expected my presence at given times of the day. That the maxims were on the look-out for me, was evident; they appeared the moment I entered the forest. A bond of sympathy established itself between myself and the ants; exactly as a commuting clerk in a human city learns to expect certain faces in the train which conveys him from the suburb where he lives to the urban block where he works; till he would miss the face of an individual otherwise unknown to him should that individual fail to appear. I even conjectured long before I knew it to be a fact that one set of workers filed past in the morning, and a different set in the afternoon. It was not an actual observation; the only thing which might have suggested the thought was the sight of workers of all sizes issuing from certain side galleries and moving about in an aimless way, apparently for no other purpose than that of recreation; for, though they seemed busy enough as they scampered about, I never saw them do any work.

Gradually, too, the character of the surveillance under which I was kept underwent a change. At all times eyes were focused on me, critically and appraisingly. But while, in the beginning, that surveillance had been hostile, it had become expectant and purposeful. I cannot say how this shading-off in their attitude was conveyed to me, unless I were to ascribe it to a sort of transference of thought. If anything fits me peculiarly for observational work, it is an infinite patience with life in all its forms. Something like a tacit understanding arose between myself and these ants; I began to look forward to my hours in the forest as one looks forward to hours of congenial company.

Then, one day, a series of extraordinary events opened up. I used to sit tailor-fasion in the loop of the two lianas which formed my seat, my back leaning against one of the pliant stems, my book resting on one knee.

One day, soon after I had settled down, I suddenly saw, on casually looking up, that, along the liana in front of me, one of those giant ants or maxims was coming down from above. I cannot tell whether this was the first time she had appeared there; but it was the first time that I became aware of her. She must have climbed the trunk of the tree, gone out on the branch, and descended along the hanging trunk of the climber. When she arrived at the level of my face, she stopped; and, fastening herself with her four hind-feet to the scaly bark of the liana, she lifted her thorax and head so as to look straight at me, and then she began to wave her antennæ in the most regular, steady, and purposeful manner. For a few moments I remained motionless; then I slowly raised my hand. Instantly she dropped to the ground whence, in her stately and deliberate way, she returned to the burrow.

The following day she reappeared as soon as I had taken my seat. Again she stopped at the level of my face and began to wave her antennæ. This time I did not offer to disturb her. I knew that the bite of the powerful jaws of these maxims is amply capable of drawing blood; but I was not afraid. As a matter of fact, violence seemed to be the last thing she was bent on. For many minutes she sat there, waving her antennæ eighteen inches from my face. More than anything else it was her persistence which held me motionless. The hand in which I grasped my book had sunk down, my knees were spread.

Thus I sat for more than an hour. Involuntarily, my attention had become centred on the black, polished stemmata or median eyes in her head. Their glint and glitter seemed so human. With all the intensity of which I was capable I wished to understand what this ant was about; but her shining eyes and the unceasing motions of her antennæ slowly had a confusing effect.

I was so absorbed that I lost track of my surroundings; till, with a violent start, I became aware of the presence of a second ant. This second ant had climbed up on the open pages of my book where she was standing on all her six feet. She too, was waving her antennæ; and her eyes glittered with the same intent purpose as those of her sister. As I said, when I became aware of this second ant, I gave a violent start; and as I did so, both dropped to the ground.

I was bewildered and puzzled as I returned to the plantation. Something uncanny had unbalanced me. Without explaining it to myself, I felt as though I were in the power of these ants. I half regretted ever having taken an interest in any such insects. I played with the idea of returning at once to the saner world of our North-American cities. At the same time I was convinced that I should do nothing of the kind; that, on the contrary, I should return to the ants next day: I knew I had "to see this thing through".

Still, all night long I dreamed of gigantic ants, ants the size of elephants, besetting my path in the forest and standing about, holding me at bay with their huge, trunk-like, waving antennæ.

A sort of obsession took hold of me. I read of nothing but ants; I thought of nothing else; I talked of them; I dreamed of them. I could no longer close my eyes without at once seeing myself in the gloomy shades of a tropical forest, surrounded by ants of mammoth size that lorded it over me. And what happened next was not calculated to rid me of that obsession.

Two days later I was hardly seated at my post when the maxim appeared on the hanging trunk of the liana; and this time she was followed by two others who also engaged in the frantic and incomprehensible waving of antennæ. I kept on the look-out for the one that had climbed up on my book; but she did not come. Instead, two whole rows formed on the ground, to both sides of my seat, all waving their antennæ and focusing their eyes on mine. A shiver ran down my spine; but I did not stir; and thus half an hour went by.

Something was happening to me. A numbness invaded my limbs; I tried to turn my eyes and could not. I knew that the routine work of the carrier columns was going on all the time; but I did not know how I knew. My mind, however, was singularly free and mobile; and this gave me a queer sensation: much as a paralytic may contrast his mental agility with his muscular rigidity. For my body was invaded, like a separate entity, by a purely physical sense of drowsiness. I made a violent effort to rouse myself; in vain.

And suddenly I was aware of the fact that that other ant had again swung up on my book. By a sort of second sight, for I knew I had not moved my eyes, I saw her sitting there, waving her antennæ.

Meanwhile my eyes remained focused upon the group of three ants in front of my face. They formed a short isosceles triangle with its apex down; all three were clinging to the bark of the liana with four hind-feet, holding the front-feet stretched out, downward, as though in the effort to counteract the violent upward twist of their thorax which supported the triangular head with its waving antennæ and glistening eyes.

I must have fallen into a state next to actual sleep or anæsthesia. My eyes were open. Moments of clear but vacant consciousness were obliterated by lapses of an absolute mental void.

After one of these lapses I suddenly realized that the ants had left me. This jarred my mental faculties back into functioning; and I was once more capable of a normal exertion of the will. I tried to swing my feet to the ground; but my movements, resembling those of a man whose limbs have "gone to sleep", were very awkward. I fell with a dull thud, bruising my head against the roots of the tree.

The violent impact roused me, and I got to my feet staggering. My head ached; and without further thought I turned north, into the path leading to the estancia.

My headache became worse; and, forcibly banishing all thought of what had happened, I lay down in my hammock, and was soon asleep. For once I dreamed neither of ants nor anything else; I lay like one dead; and it was with some difficulty that my host roused me for the evening meal. I did not say a word of my adventure; I was determined first to find its key.

On awaking I had had a very peculiar sensation. I had not seemed to be I.

Just what that portended I could not say as yet; but I felt that is was momentous. I can imagine a doctor feeling like that when he has gone into an area stricken with pestilence. He watches himself for symptoms, alert at all times to apply to himself the remedies which he has been administering to others. Even while he is in perfect health, he keeps watching for signs of his being invaded by the disease.

All sorts of inconsequential thoughts floated through my mind that night. I wondered whether the ants who--of that I had no doubt--were responsible for my condition felt as restless as I did myself; whether this thing meant as much to them as it did to me. There was no answer, of course. I pursued the questions only in order to let the preoccupation with side-issues veil the tremendous significance of the facts of the case. By some mesmeric action I, my individuality, had been sucked up or down into an alien mass-consciousness which communed with me through channels other than those of the senses. The moment I surrendered myself, my consciousness was that, not of my former self, but that of ants, and of no individual ant, so far; but of all antdom, or at least of the community of these particular ants. I felt as though I were on the verge of a revelation.

"You did not sleep well last night?" my host asked next morning.

"No," I replied. "The fact is I am on the point of an important discovery in entomology."

"Glad to hear you are successful," he congratulated.

How inadequate it all seemed! As soon as I could decently do so, I left him and hurried into the forest,

I had hardly sat down in my seat when I saw the first of my new friends coming down the liana. Today her movements lacked that ceremonial, circumspect, and mysterious air; they were businesslike and matter-of-fact. Other maxims were all about, on the ground. The individual on the liana gave some sort of signal to her companions, but what this signal consisted in I could not have said. Instantly a second ant swung up on the page of my book. Whether this was the same ant that had been there before I did not know; I presumed so. Now I had my first close look at this individual.

At once I knew her to be an ant of mark. She was hairier than the others, though her hairs were much broken and worn in places. Since I knew that the hairs of ants are improperly so-called, their function being, not that of protection, but that of exceedingly delicate sense-organs of odour and touch, I recognized in her a more finely-organized being, brainier than her companions. I also had the impression of extreme old age; her armour was deeply scored and abraded; and though it may not have been a colour impression at all, there was about her that which suggested greyness--and weariness, that weariness which goes with great wisdom and a wide experience in the ways of the world. Henceforth I should have recognized this ant among thousands of swarming individuals of her caste.

This venerable dean among ants, then, set to work waving her antennæ.

For a moment I was absorbed in watching her procedure. With head lowered, she raised first one then the other of these delicate organs and swung them down again; and slowly, as I watched these manoeuvres, I became aware that the movements were not straight up and down either, but modulated and embellished, as it were, by a thousand different vibratory oscillations of varying amplitudes which had at first remained unnoticed.

Almost immediately following that observation, a peculiar sensation invaded me. I felt my own consciousness slipping. There was an intermediate stage, resembling that of a person who is being put under the influence of an anæsthetic: the stage when he is still aware of what is being done to him but already finds it impossible to defend himself against the influence invading him; he tries to lift his hand in protest and thinks he is succeeding; but in reality his body has already given in. At that stage I was still seeing, still watching the ant; but already she was drawing my consciousness into her own; and with her consciousness her purpose had become my own.

That purpose was to convey to me an experience, the contents of a whole life. Just how this experience and this life became my own, I cannot tell, of course; nor how long this state of mesmeric transposition of personality may have lasted. To me it seemed to extend over years and years; in reality it was probably comprised within minutes or even seconds. For, when, on awaking from this trance, I staggered to my feet, I saw that the minute hand of my watch seemed hardly to have moved at all.

I went "home"; that is, back to the estancia; but while doing so, I knew that I was not yet I. I walked and acted like a human being; but my mind was that of the ant; I had lived her life; and her memory was mine. I could look back upon all she had gone through; and it devolved upon me to put down a record of what, by some miracle, had been communicated to, or infused into, my consciousness.

I cannot, therefore, claim that what follows is my work. It is the work of Wawa-quee, the ant; and it must be read in that sense. I merely set it down, under compulsion.

Perhaps I should add that I went back to the formicary once or twice. I never again saw my friend; but the activities of the tribe went on undisturbed as though nothing had ever happened to interrupt their placid flow.

F. P. G.