around pebble boulders, mossy orchards,
and grass jungles to a specially prepared path.

Thus in words, in sentences, we may describe the cutting of a single
leaf; but only in the imagination can we visualize the cell-like or
crystal-like duplication of this throughout all the great forests of
Guiana and of South America. As I write, a million jaws snip through
their stint; as you read, ten million Attas begin on new bits of leaf.
And all in silence and in dim light, legions passing along the little
jungle roads, unending lines of trembling banners, a political parade
of ultra socialism, a procession of chlorophyll floats illustrating
unreasoning unmorality, a fairy replica of "Birnam Forest come to
Dunsinane."

In their leaf-cutting, Attas have mastered mass, but not form. I have
never seen one cut off a piece too heavy to carry, but many a
hard-sliced bit has had to be deserted because of the configuration
of the upper edge. On almost any trail, an ant can be found with a
two-inch stem of grass, attempting to pass under a twig an inch
overhead. After five or ten minutes of pushing, backing, and pulling,
he may accidentally march off to one side, or reach up and climb over;
but usually he drops his burden. His little works have been wound up,
and set at the mark "home"; and though he has now dropped the prize
for which he walked a dozen ant-miles, yet any idea of cutting another
stem, or of picking up a slice of leaf from those lying along the
trail, never occurs to him. He sets off homeward, and if any emotion
of sorrow, regret, disappointment, or secret relief troubles his
ganglia, no trace of it appears in antennae, carriage, or speed. I can
very readily conceive of his trudging sturdily all the way back to the
nest, entering it, and going to the place where he would have dumped
his load, having fulfilled his duty in the spirit at least. Then, if
there comes a click in his internal time-clock, he may set out upon
another quest--more cabined, cribbed, and confined than any member of
a Cook's tourist party.

I once watched an ant with a piece of leaf which had a regular
shepherd's crook at the top, and if his adventures of fifty feet could
have been caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chaplin would have
had an arthropod rival. It hooked on stems and pulled its bearer off
his feet, it careened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at one
place mixing up with half a dozen. A big thistledown became tangled in