GROUP ORGANIZATION 1 85 



that whenever two birds are together invariably one 

 is despot and the other subservient and both know 

 it. He has said, "Despotism is the basic idea of the 

 world, indissolubly bound up with all life and exist- 

 ence. On it rests the meaning of the struggle for 

 existence." He applies this principle to interactions 

 of men and of other animals and even to lifeless 

 things. He says: "There is nothing that does not 

 have a despot . . . usually a great number of des- 

 pots. The storm is despot over the water; the light- 

 ning over the rock; water over the stone which it 

 dissolves"; and he cites with approval the old Ger- 

 man proverb that God is despot over the Devil. 



This poetry of Schjelderup-Ebbe's is striking, but 

 does it rightly interpret the facts? We have spent a 

 considerable amount of time at Chicago, investi- 

 gating the social order of various birds. Messrs. 

 Masure, Shoemaker, Collias and Kellogg and Miss 

 Bennett have been particularly active iii this work. 

 We have not yet studied as many varieties of birds 

 as Schjelderup-Ebbe, and we have no experience to 

 report about the relation between God and the 

 Devil. Of the birds we have studied, only the flocks 

 of white-throated sparrows approach the common 

 chickens in the fixity of their social hierarchies, and 

 they do not equal it. The common pigeon, the ring 

 dove, the common canary and parrakeets show a less 



