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, Stentor, 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 evolution 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 Sten- 

 tor, of Capella and Cothurnia the universe bal- 

 anced. My attention was drawn from the atom 

 Gonium whose brave little spirit was striving to 



