156 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



micincB, which is a subfamily of Formicidoe,^^ 

 etc. 



With a feeling of slightly greater intimacy, of 

 mental possession, we set out, armed with a name 

 of one hundred and seventeen years' standing, 

 and find a big Atta worker carving away at a 

 bit of leaf, exactly as his ancestors had done for 

 probably one hundred and seventeen thousand 

 vears. 



We gently lift him from his labor, and a drop 

 of chloroform banishes from his ganglia all mem- 

 ory of the hundred thousand years of pruning. 

 Under the lens his strange personality becomes 

 manifest, and we wonder whether the old Danish 

 zoologist had in mind the slender toe-tips which 

 support him, or in a chuckling mood made him 

 a namesake of C. Quintius Atta. A close-up 

 shows a very comic little being, encased in a 

 prickly, chestnut-colored armor, v/hich should 

 make him fearless in a den of a hundred anteat- 

 ers. The front view of his head is a bit mephis- 

 tophelian, for it is drawn upward into two horny 

 spines; but the s'de view recalls a little girl with 

 her hair brushed very tightly up and back from 

 her face. 



The connection between Atta and the world 



