billion behaving as one.

This community of mind stands the lower orders in great stead. It makes
up to them in a measure for the want of reason and judgment. In what we
call telepathy we get hints of the same thing among ourselves. Telepathy
is probably a survival from our earlier animal state.

II. MAETERLINCK ON THE BEE

Maeterlinck, in his "Life of the Bee" resists the
conclusion of Sir John Lubbock that flies are more
intelligent than honey bees:

If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees [says Sir
John], and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle
down horizontally with its base to the window, you will
find that the bees will persist till they die of
exhaustion or hunger in their endeavors to discover an
issue through the glass; while the flies, in less than two
minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on
the opposite side.

The flies are more intelligent than the bees because their problems of
life are much more complicated; they are fraught with many more dangers;
their enemies lurk on all sides; while the bees have very few natural
enemies. There are no bee-catchers in the sense that there are scores of
flycatchers. I know of no bird that preys upon the worker bees. The
kingbird is sometimes called the "bee martin" because he occasionally
snaps up the drones. All our insectivorous birds prey upon the flies;
the swallows sweep them up in the air, the swifts scoop them in, while,
besides the so-called flycatchers, the cedar-birds, the thrushes, the
vireos, and all other soft-billed birds, subsist more or less upon them.
Try to catch a big blow-fly upon the window-pane and see how difficult
the trick is, while with a honey bee it is no trick at all. Or try to
"swat" the ordinary house-fly with your hand. See how he squares himself
and plants himself as your threatening hand approaches! He is ready for
a trial of speed. He seems to know that your hand is slower than he is,
and he is right in most cases. Now try a honey bee. The case is
reversed. The bee has never been stalked; it shows no fear; and to crush
it is as easy as to crush a beetle.

The wit and cunning of all animals are developed by their struggle for
existence. The harder the struggle, the more their intelligence. Our
skunk and porcupine are very stupid because they do not have to take
thought about their own safety; Nature has done that for them.

To bolster up his case, Maeterlinck urges that "the capacit