by the first one, although it was far out of sight. Wherever it had
made a slight detour they did so likewise. I scraped with my knife
a small portion of the clay on the trail, and the ants were
completely at fault for a time which way to go. Those ascending and
those descending stopped at the scraped portion, and made short
circuits until they hit the scented trail again, when all their
hesitation vanished, and they ran up and down it with the greatest
confidence. On gaining the top of the cutting, the ants entered
some brushwood suitable for hunting. In a very short space of time
the information was communicated to the ants below, and a dense
column rushed up to search for their prey.

The Ecitons are singular amongst the ants in this respect, that
they have no fixed habitations, but move on from one place to
another, as they exhaust the hunting grounds around them. I think
Eciton hamata does not stay more than four or five days in one
place. I have sometimes come across the migratory columns. They may
easily be known by all the common workers moving in one direction,
many of them carrying the larvae and pupae carefully in their jaws.
Here and there one of the light-coloured officers moves backwards
and forwards directing the columns. Such a column is of enormous
length, and contains many thousands, if not millions of
individuals. I have sometimes followed them up for two or three
hundred yards without getting to the end.

They make their temporary habitations in hollow trees, and
sometimes underneath large fallen trunks that offer suitable
hollows. A nest that I came across in the latter situation was open
at one side. The ants were clustered together in a dense mass, like
a great swarm of bees, hanging from the roof, but reaching to the