ork, a clump of shrubs: all are crossed without any marked
preference for one sort of road rather than another.

What is rigidly fixed is the path home, which follows the outward track
in all its windings and all its crossings, however difficult. Laden with
their plunder, the Red Ants return to the nest by the same road, often
an exceedingly complicated one, which the exigencies of the chase
compelled them to take originally. They repass each spot which they
passed at first; and this is to them a matter of such imperative
necessity that no additional fatigue nor even the gravest danger can
make them alter the track.

Let us suppose that they have crossed a thick heap of dead leaves,
representing to them a path beset with yawning gulfs, where every moment
some one falls, where many are exhausted as they struggle out of the
hollows and reach the heights by means of swaying bridges, emerging at
last from the labyrinth of lanes. No matter: on their return, they will
not fail, though weighed down with their burden, once more to struggle
through that weary maze. To avoid all this fatigue, they would have but
to swerve slightly from the original path, for the good, smooth road is
there, hardly a step away. This little deviation never occurs to them.

I came upon them one day when they were on one of their raids. They
were marching along the inner edge of the stone-work of the garden-pond,
where I have replaced the old batrachians by a colony of Gold-fish.
The wind was blowing very hard from the north and, taking the column
in flank, sent whole rows of the Ants flying into the water. The fish
hurried up; they watched the performance and gobbled up the drowning
insects. It was a difficult bit; and the column was decimated before it
had passed. I expected to see the return journey made by another road,
which would wind round and avoid the fatal cliff. Not at all. The
nymph-laden band resumed the parlous path and the Goldfish received a
double windfall: the Ants and their prizes. Rather than alter its track,
the column was decimated a second time.

It is not easy to find the way home again after a distant expedition,
during which there have been various sorties, nearly always by different
paths; and this difficulty makes it absolutely necessary for the Amazons
to return by the same road by which they went. The insect has no choice
of route, if it would not be lost on the way: it must come back by
the track which it knows and wh