ou
have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. Behold what Maeterlinck makes
out of the life of the bee, simply by getting at and portraying the
facts--a true wonder-book, the enchantment of poetry wedded to the
authority of science.

Works on animal intelligence, such as Romanes's, abound in incidents
that show in the animals reason and forethought in their simpler
forms; but in many cases the incidents related in these works are not
well authenticated, nor told by trained observers. The observations of
the great majority of people have no scientific value whatever.
Romanes quotes from some person who alleges that he saw a pair of
nightingales, during a flood in the river near which their nest was
placed, pick up the nest bodily and carry it to a place of safety.
This is incredible. If Romanes himself or Darwin himself said he saw
this, one would have to believe it. Birds whose nests have been
plundered sometimes pull the old nest to pieces and use the material,
or parts of it, in building a new nest; but I cannot believe that any
pair of birds ever picked up a nest containing eggs and carried it off
to a new place. How could they do it? With one on each side, how could
they fly with the nest between them? They could not carry it with
their feet, and how could they manage it with their beaks?

My neighbor met in the woods a black snake that had just swallowed a
red squirrel. Now your romance-naturalist may take such a fact as this
and make as pretty a story of it as he can. He may ascribe to the
snake and his victim all the human emotions he pleases. He may make
the snake glide through the tree-tops from limb to limb, and from tree
to tree, in pursuit of its prey: the main thing is, the snake got the
squirrel. If our romancer makes the snake fascinate the squirrel, I
shall object, because I don't believe that snakes have this power.
People like to believe that they have. It would seem as if this
subtle, gliding, hateful creature ought to have some such mysterious
gift, but I have no proof that it has. Every year I see the black
snake robbing birds'-nests, or pursued by birds whose nests it has
just plundered, but I have yet to see it cast its fatal spell upon a
grown bird. Or, if our romancer says that the black snake was drilled
in the art of squirrel-catching by its mother, I shall know he is a
pretender.

Speaking of snakes reminds me of an incident I have several times
witnessed in our woods in connection with a s