THE ATTAS AT HOME 193 



an Atta has relations but no friends, when ill, 

 every jaw is against him. 



As I write this seated at my laboratory table, 

 by turning down my lamp and looking out, I 

 can see the star dust of Orion's nebula, and with- 

 out moving from my chair, Rigel, Sirius, Ca- 

 pella and Betelgeuze — the blue, white, yellow 

 and red evolution of so-called lifeless cosmic mat- 

 ter. A few slides from the aquarium at my side 

 reveal an evolutionary sequence to the heavenly 

 host — the simplest of earthly organisms playing 

 fast and loose with the borderland, not only of 

 plants and animals, but of the one and of the 

 many-celled. First a swimming lily, S ten tor, a sol- 

 itary animal bloom, twenty-five to the inch; Co- 

 thurnia, a double lily, and Gonium, with a quar- 

 tet of cells clinging tremulously together, pro- 

 gressing unsteadily — materially toward the rim 

 of my field of vision — in the evoluti£)n of earthly 

 life toward sponges, peripatus, ants and man. 



I was interrupted in my microcosmus just as 

 it occurred to me that Chesterton would heartily 

 approve of my approximation of Sirius and S ten- 

 tor, of Capella and Cothurnia — the universe bal- 

 anced. My attention was drawn from the atom 

 Gonium — whose brave little spirit was striving to 



