Serried Ranks, 1

In viewing Annabel Elgar's wonderful current photography show at Wapping Project Bankside, the phrase 'serried ranks' kept coming into my mind to describe one of the 'resources' she puts into play.

I decided to try my Google luck at the phrase, especially since, strangely enough, in extensive quotations s.v. 'serried' and related trades in the OED the phrase itself fails to turn up. Here is the first result.

This is from John L. Stoddard's lectures on Japan, and is indeed labelled 'Serried Ranks'.

Here is a rather different 'serried ranks' image.

More on both of these later!