The first reported effect of its poison—actually quite mild—is said to have been to put the victim into a deep lethargy from which he could be roused only by music which set into motion an overpowering impulse to get up and dance. Once the victim started to dance he could not stop until he fell to the ground from exhaustion. Then the condition supposedly was cured for a year. On the anniversary of the bite, however, the dance was involuntarily repeated. From the tarantula’s first victim the dancing mania allegedly spread like a contagious disease through the surrounding countryside. The name still is used both for an Italian dance and for the music which accompanies it. The tarantula is a subterranean creature which hibernates in its burrow during the winter. Bees and wasps are said to be killed almost instantly by its bite. The spider always strikes at the junction of the head and thorax. _A Flower That Grows Through Solid Ice_ A plant that drills through several inches of solid ice to bloom in early spring is the blue moonwort of the Swiss Alps. It belongs to the primrose family. In autumn it develops thick, leathery leaves. These lie flat on the ground, expectant of the snow and ice sheet that may cover them to a depth of several feet. When spring arrives and the hot sun melts most of the snow and some of the ice, water trickles down to the rootlets and arouses growth in the sleeping plant. Internal combustion ensues with the floral tissues. The resulting heat melts the ice about the uprising flower buds and the stem pushes its way upward. More water flows to the roots and finally the plant tunnels a passage to the air and sunshine. So long as the heat given off from the growing stem and buds is sufficient to prevent solid freezing of the parts the plant is indifferent to the surrounding ice cold temperature. It undergoes the usual transformations, is fertilized by early bees and forms many hundreds of wonderful blue flower groups which look as if they were beds over a thick layer of transparent ice. The leaves are now no longer thick and fleshy, but thin and papery. They yield up their carbon compounds as fuel to melt a tunnel through the ice and production of buds and blossoms on a flower stem above the ice mantle. _The Versatile Ant Farmers_ There are microscopic “farmers” whose fields are measured in fractions of inches. They are ants—the most widespread fungus-growers in the Western Hemisphere. Their range extends from Florida to Brazil. They are tiny creatures, seldom noticed, who cultivate a species of yeast which is their sole food. The ways of life of this curious ant with the formidable scientific name of cyphomyrmex rimosus minutus, have been studied throughout their habitat by Dr. Neal A. Weber of Swarthmore College.