The road is reached, and progress is comparatively easy. Holding the grain in her mandibles well above the surface, she breaks into what I may describe with sufficient accuracy as a ‘trot,’ and with little further interruption reaches the disk (the cleared space round the nest, that is to say) and disappears within the gate.” The seeds, when thus brought into the nest, are stored by the ants in long galleries, or in vaulted chambers, the floors of which have been specially prepared for its reception. It is a very curious thing that the stored seeds, though they often become quite moist, do not germinate, as would be the case under ordinary circumstances, if we, for instance, were to lay them in some cave or cellar. Were they to do so they would become bitter, and, of course, unfit for food, so that it seems as if the ants must have some way of stopping the process of nature. What this way is we do not know, but if, out of a great many thousands, some of the seeds do begin to sprout, the ants bite off the little rootlet or radicle that then makes its appearance, by which act the germination is prevented from going farther. It is quite as wonderful that the ants should have found out how to prevent the seeds from growing in their nests—and do it in two ways—as it is that they should plant it in fields specially prepared for it to grow upon. CHAPTER IX ANT ARMIES—A SNAKE’S PRECAUTION—WONDERFUL BRIDGES AND TUNNELS—MUSHROOM-GROWING ANTS. We will next consider the foraging ants of such tropical countries as Brazil and Western Equatorial Africa. To the latter the name of driver-ants has been given, because when they set out on their invading marches they drive every living thing, including man, before them. Everything they seize they devour, and as they go in great numbers and constantly open out into two or more columns so as to enclose patches of the forest, hosts of creatures find it impossible to escape destruction. Du Chaillu gives an interesting account of these ants, which were called _bashikonay_ by the natives amongst whom he was living. He says: “This ant is very abundant in the whole region I have travelled over in Africa, and is the most voracious creature I ever met. It is the dread of all living animals from the leopard to the smallest insect. I do not think they build a nest or house of any kind. At any rate, they carry nothing away, but eat all their prey on the spot. It is their habit to march through the forests in a long regular line—a line about two inches broad, and often several miles in length. All along this line are larger ants, who act as officers, stand outside the ranks, and keep this singular army in order. If they come to a place where there are no trees to shelter them from the sun, whose heat they cannot bear, they immediately build underground tunnels, through which the whole army passes in columns, to the forest beyond. These tunnels are four or five feet