lants the little fungus cutting and
tends it with the utmost solicitude. The care and feeding in her past
life have stored within her the substance for vast numbers of eggs.
Nine out of ten which she lays she eats to give her the strength to go
on with her labors, and when the first larvae emerge, they, too, are
fed with surplus eggs. In time they pupate and at the end of six weeks
the first workers--all tiny Minims--hatch. Small as they are, born in
darkness, yet no education is needed. The Spirit of the Attas infuses
them. Play and rest are the only things incomprehensible to them, and
they take charge at once, of fungus, of excavation, of the care of the
queen and eggs, the feeding of the larvae, and as soon as the huskier
Mediums appear, they break through into the upper world and one day
the first bit of green leaf is carried down into the nest.

The queen rests. Henceforth, as far as we know, she becomes a mere
egg-producing machine, fed mechanically by mechanical workers, the
food transformed by physiological mechanics into yolk and then
deposited. The aeroplane has become transformed into an incubator.

One wonders whether, throughout the long hours, weeks and months, in
darkness which renders her eyes a mockery, there ever comes to her
dull ganglion a flash of memory of The Day, of the rushing wind, the
escape from pursuing puff-birds, the jungle stretching away for miles
beneath, her mate, the cool tap of drops from a passing shower, the
volplane to earth, and the obliteration of all save labor. Did she
once look behind her, did she turn aside for a second, just to feel
the cool silk of petals?

As we have seen, an Atta worker is a member of the most implacable
labor-union in the world: he believes in a twenty-four hour day, no pay, no
play, no rest--he is a cog in a machine-driven
Good-for-the-greatest-number. After studying these beings for a week, one
longs to go out and shout for kaisers and tsars, for selfishness and
crime--anything as a relief from such terrible unthinking altruism. All
Atta workers are born free and equal--which is well; and they remain
so--which is what a Buddhist priest once called "gashang"--or so it
sounded, and which he explained as a state where plants and animals and men
were crystal-like in growth and existence. What a welcome sight it would be
to see a Medium mount a bit of twig, antennae a crowd of Minims about him,
and start off on a foray of his own!

We may jeer or cond