The guards that take their stand at the gate, the bees that become fans at the entrance to ventilate the hive, the nurses, the bees that bring the bee-bread, the bees that pack it into the cells, the bees that go forth to find a home for the new swarm, the sweepers and cleaners of the hive, the workers that bring propolis to seal up the cracks and crevices--all act in obedience to the voiceless Spirit of the Hive. After we have discounted Maeterlinck so far as the facts will bear us out in doing, it remains to be said that he is the philosopher of the insect world. If Fabre is the Homer, as he himself has said, Maeterlinck is the Plato of that realm. How wisely he speaks of the insect world in his latest volume, "Mountain Paths": The insect does not belong to our world. The other animals, the plants even, notwithstanding their dumb life and the great secrets which they cherish, do not seem wholly foreign to us. In spite of all, we feel a certain earthly brotherhood with them. They often surprise and amaze our intelligence, but do not utterly upset it. There is something, on the other hand, about the insect that does not belong to the habits, the ethics, the psychology of our globe. One would be inclined to say that the insect comes from another planet, more monstrous, more energetic, more insane, more atrocious, more infernal than our own. One would think that it was born of some comet that had lost its course and died demented in space. Speaking of the intelligence of bees reminds me of a well-known woodsman and camp-fire man who recently extolled in print the intelligence of hornets, saying that they have the ability to differentiate friends from foes. "They know us and we talk to them and they are made to feel as welcome as any of our guests." "When a stranger visits the camp, they attract the attention of one they know _who recognizes their signal by thought or gesture and leaves immediately, returning only when the stranger has departed_." (The italics are mine.) He says the same hornets apparently come to them year after year, greeting them on their arrival, and, should they be accompanied by strangers, they treat them with the same deference as "when they visit us after we have been in camp some time." Did one ever hear before of such well-bred and well-mannered bees? What would Maeterlinck say to all that? Its absurdity becomes apparent when we remember that hornets live but a single season, that none of them lives over the winter, save the queen, and that she never leaves the nest in summer after she has got her family of workers around her. III. ODD OR EVEN