THE ATTAS AT HOME 181 
When the fungus garden is in full growth, the 
nest labors of the Minims begin, and until the 
knobbed bodies are actually ripe, they never 
cease to weed and to prune, thus killing off the 
multitude of other fungi and foreign organisms, 
and by pruning they keep their particular fun- 
gus growing, and prevent it from fructifying. 
The fungus of the Attas is a particular species 
with the resonant, Dunsanyesque name of Roz- 
ites gongylophora. It is quite unknown outside 
of the nests of these ants, and is as artificial as 
a banana. 
Only in Calcutta bazaars at night, and in un- 
derground streets of Pekin, have I seen stranger 
beings than I unearthed in my Atta nest. Now 
and then there rolled out of a shovelful of earth, 
an unbelievably big and rotund Cicada larva— 
which in the course of time, whether in one or 
in seventeen years, would emerge as the great 
marbled winged Cicada gigas, spreading five 
inches from tip to tip. Small tarantulas, with , 
beautiful wine-colored cephalothorax, made their 
home deep in the nest, guarded, perhaps, by their - 
dense covering of hair; slender scorpions sidled 
out from the ruins. They were bare, with vul- 
nerable joints, but they had the advantage of 
