Until one becomes accustomed to these scenes of carnage the sight is really terrible, especially when one lies down flat and takes an ant’s-eye view of the field of battle. Yet such is the fierceness and savage fury on one side and hopeless terror or frantic efforts to escape on the part of the victims that it needs but little imagination to stir deeply one’s sympathies. [Illustration: FIG. 26. STREAKED FLYCATCHER.] In place of the steady advance of a well-drilled army, presenting a solid front of serried ranks, the formation of the hunting-ants may be compared to an innumerable host of cavalry scouts who quarter the ground in every direction, the whole army slowly advancing and including new territory in the scene of operations. Frequent flurries or louder rustlings follow the discovery and the subsequent terrible struggle of some quarry of noble size—a huge beetle or mighty lizard. One fact impressed us from the first: every creature aroused by the ants seemed to know instinctively of the awful danger. Whether through odor or sight or sound, the alarm always carried its full meaning. Insects which ordinarily would escape the collecting net by a single quick motion, here dashed away with such terror that they often flew against our clothes or a tree, and were hurled to the ground. Lizards took shelter under our shoes or shot off like streaks of light for many yards. Our presence and that of the predatory birds was disregarded in the efforts to avoid the danger which generations of inherited experience had made the most vivid in life. Insects which usually feigned death as a means of escape, when disturbed by these ants used all the motor organs given them by nature to flee from the dreaded foe. Escape seemed to be the result of accident with all wingless creatures, even with those possessing good eyesight, for the first blind terrified rush as often carried them to certain death in the thickest of the host as it did to safety in the van or on one side of the ant army. Even wings were not a surety of escape. Twice I saw moths arise heavily from their hiding-places with a half-dozen of the little fiends clinging to their legs and wings. One was snapped up, ants and all, by a big Flycatcher, and the other fell among the quartermaster’s brigade in the rear, where every ant within reach dropped his load and hurled himself upon the newcomer. Here and there one might observe good-sized balls of ants rolling about, and in the centre would be some hard-cased beetle or other insect, who gave up only after killing and maiming a score of his assailants.