CAUSE OF EVOLUTION 389 



with the building of the spider. Think of a spinning 

 machine with 600 spools and bobbins and the dexterity 

 required to handle it, and the job o^ manufacturing the 

 cellulose from other crude material with which to weave 

 the threads to be used for snares and other purposes ! 

 Where does man produce any such rapidly moving, com- 

 plicated factory? Until a person has seen some of the 

 productions of the cell through the microscope, he does 

 not comprehend what life is. A certain species of the 

 spider, we remember, weaves a waterproof 'diving bell, 

 which he ties to the grass under water, and in which he 

 dwells with his family and catches water insects for food 

 when they come near him. He carries the air from above 

 down into his underwater dwelling, which is both air and 

 water-tight. 



The intelligence of man cannot produce any structure 

 involving as many complicated acts of skill and design as 

 the spider, nor can man show any more social progress 

 than the bee. There is no doubt that the bees have some 

 method of simple and rapid inter-communication. If any- 

 thing happens to the hive or if some new place to get 

 honey is discovered, they all know about it very quickly. 

 Mr. Maeterlink has the following to say about this : 



"Let us now in order to form a clearer conception of 

 the bee's intellectual power proceed to consider their 

 methods of inter-communication. There can be no 

 doubting that they understand each other ; and indeed it 

 were surely impossible for a republic so considerable, 

 wherein the labours are so varied and so marvelously 

 combined to subsist amid the silence and spiritual isola- 

 tion of so many thousand creatures. They must be able 

 therefore to give expression to thoughts and feelings by 

 means either of a phonetic vocabulary or more probably 

 of some kind of tactile language or magnetic intuition 



