both Mediums and Minims, who surround it and
drink their fill.

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 fungus growing, and prevent it from fructifying. The fungus
of the Attas is a particular species with the resonant, Dunsanyesque
name of _Rozites 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 underground 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
vulnerable joints, but they had the advantage of a pair of hands, and
long, mobile arms, which could quickly and skilfully pluck an
attacking ant from any part of their anatomy.

The strangest of all the tenants were the tiny, amber-colored roaches
which clung frantically to the heads of the great soldier ants, or
scurried over the tumultuous mounds, searching for a crevice
sanctuary. They were funny, fat little beings, wholly blind, yet
supremely conscious of the danger that threatened, and with only the
single thought of getting below the surface as quickly as possible.
The Attas had very few insect guests, but this cockroach is one which
had made himself perfectly at home. Through century upon century he
had become more and more specialized and adapted to Atta life, eyes
slipping until they were no more than faint specks, legs and antennae
changing, gait becoming altered to whatever speed and carriage best
suited little guests in big underground halls and galleries. He and
his race had evolved unseen and unnoticed even by the Maxim policemen.
But when nineteen hundred humanly historical years had passed, a man
with a keen sense of fitness named him Little Friend of the Attas; and
so for a few more years, until scientists give place to