o see, and to
set vividly before the eyes of others, the full life-histories of the
creatures that dwell in the waste spaces of the world.

At this point both Cherrie and Miller collected a number of mammals
and birds which they had not previously obtained; whether any were new
to science could only be determined after the specimens reached the
American Museum. While making the round of his small mammal traps one
morning, Miller encountered an army of the formidable foraging ants.
The species was a large black one, moving with a well-extended front.
These ants, sometimes called army-ants, like the driver-ants of
Africa, move in big bodies and destroy or make prey of every living
thing that is unable or unwilling to get out of their path in time.
They run fast, and everything runs away from their advance. Insects
form their chief prey; and the most dangerous and aggressive lower-
life creatures make astonishingly little resistance to them. Miller's
attention was first attracted to this army of ants by noticing a big
centipede, nine or ten inches long, trying to flee before them. A
number of ants were biting it, and it writhed at each bite, but did
not try to use its long curved jaws against its assailants. On other
occasions he saw big scorpions and big hairy spiders trying to escape
in the same way, and showing the same helpless inability to injure
their ravenous foes, or to defend themselves. The ants climb trees to
a great height, much higher than most birds' nests, and at once kill
and tear to pieces any fledglings in the nests they reach. But they
are not as common as some writers seem to imagine; days may elapse
before their armies are encountered, and doubtless most nests are
never visited or threatened by them. In some instances it seems likely
that the birds save themselves and their young in other ways. Some
nests are inaccessible. From others it is probable that the parents
remove the young. Miller once, in Guiana, had been watching for some
days a nest of ant-wrens which contained young. Going thither one
morning, he found the tree, and the nest itself, swarming with
foraging ants. He at first thought that the fledglings had been
devoured, but he soon saw the parents, only about thirty yards off,
with food in their beaks. They were engaged in entering a dense part
of the jungle, coming out again without food in their beaks, and soon
reappearing once more with food. Miller never found their new nests,
but the