emn the Attas for their hard-shell existence, but
there comes to mind again and again, the wonder of it all. Are the
hosts of little beings really responsible; have they not evolved into
a pocket, a mental cul-de-sac, a swamping of individuality, pooling
their personalities? And what is it they have gained--what pledge of
success in food, in safety, in propagation? They are not separate
entities, they have none of the freedom of action, of choice, of
individuality of the solitary wasps. They are the somatic cells of the
body politic, while deep within the nest are the guarded sexual
cells--the winged kings and queens, which from time to time, exactly
as in isolated organisms, are thrown off to propagate, and to found
new nests. They, no less than the workers, are parts of something
more subtle than the visible Attas and their material nest. Whether I
go to the ant as sluggard, or myrmocologist, or accidentally, via
Pterodactyl Pups, a day spent with them invariably leaves me with my
whole being concentrated on this mysterious Atta Ego. Call it
Vibration, Aura, Spirit of the nest, clothe ignorance in whatever term
seems appropriate, we cannot deny its existence and power.

As with the Army ants, the flowing lines of leaf-cutters always
brought to mind great arteries, filled with pulsating, tumbling
corpuscles. When an obstruction appeared, as a fallen leaf, across the
great sandy track, a dozen, or twenty or a hundred workers
gathered--like leucocytes--and removed the interfering object. If I
injured a worker who was about to enter the nest, I inoculated the
Atta organism with a pernicious, foreign body. Even the victim himself
was dimly aware of the law of fitness. Again and again he yielded to
the call of the nest, only to turn aside at the last moment. From a
normal link in the endless Atta chain, he had become an
outcast--snapped at by every passing ant, self-banished, wandering off
at nightfall to die somewhere in the wilderness of grass. When well,
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
without moving from my chair, Rigel, Sirius, Capella and
Betelgeuze--the blue, white, yellow and red evolution of so-called
lifeless cosmic matter. A few slides from the aquarium at my side
reveal an evolutionary sequence to the heavenly host--the simplest of
ea