entering into the same hive without being
immediately detected and killed. It, however, sometimes happens that
several hives have the same signs, when their several members rob each
other with impunity. In these cases the bees whose hives suffer most
alter their signs, and then can immediately detect their enemy." The
same thing was thought to be true of a colony of ants. Others held
that the bees and the ants knew one another individually, as men of
the same town do! Would not any serious student of nature in our day
know in advance of experiment that all this was childish and absurd?
Lubbock showed by numerous experiments that bees and ants did not
recognize their friends or their enemies by either of these methods.
Just how they did do it he could not clearly settle, though it seems
as if they were guided more by the sense of smell than by anything
else. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has much to say about the
"spirit of the hive," and it does seem as if there were some
mysterious agent or power at work there that cannot be located or
defined.

This current effort to interpret nature has led one of the well-known
prophets of the art to say that in this act of interpretation one
"must struggle against fact and law to develop or keep his own
individuality." This is certainly a curious notion, and I think an
unsafe one, that the student of nature must struggle against fact and
law, must ignore or override them, in order to give full swing to his
own individuality. Is it himself, then, and not the truth that he is
seeking to exploit? In the field of natural history we have been led
to think the point at issue is not man's individuality, but correct
observation--a true report of the wild life about us. Is one to give
free rein to his fancy or imagination; to see animal life with his
"vision," and not with his corporeal eyesight; to hear with his
transcendental ear, and not through his auditory nerve? This may be
all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why call the outcome
natural history? Why set it down as a record of actual observation?
Why penetrate the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides,
woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your observations, if you have all
the while been "struggling against fact and law," and do not want or
need confirmation? If nature study is only to exploit your own
individuality, why bother about what other people have or have not
seen or heard? Why, in fact, go to the