156 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
micine, which is a subfamily of Formicidae,” 
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 
years. 
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, which 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 side view recalls a little girl with 
her hair brushed very tightly up and back from 
her face. 
The connection between Atta and the world 
