Believe it or not, I have not been able to discover anything like a minority problem amongst the creatures that inhabit my garden, or anywhere else in Nature for that matter, except, of course, amongst human beings. Amongst animals the various species are either frankly predatory and prey upon certain other species, or they are remarkably tolerant of other species. It is astonishing how well the various forms of non-rapacious birds get along together, not to mention the innumerable species of insects and the slugs, snails and other lower forms of animal life. As a rule, like does not attack like, the outstanding exception being the ants, which, as I pointed out in one of my earlier notes, are definitely aggressive, living in colonies ruled by a system comparable with that governing what we know as totalitarian states amongst men. They make war, one colony against another, and terrible battles occur, in which whole colonies may be wiped out, Incidentally, it is only because they have evolved their system of complete subservience of the individual to the state and the resultant nity of action of the whole colony that they are able thus to wage war on other colonies. But it argues a very low grade of intelligence on the part of the individual ants. They are nothing but soulless slaves to a system, and are incapable of coping with any contingency out of the ordinary that may overtake them. Changed conditions in their surroundings mean their annihilation, individually or collectively. The non-predatory species of all branches of animal life, on the other hand, by mutual consent leave each other alone, acting on the principle of "live and let live." This is especially noticeable among the birds which come to feed at the table on my lawn every morning. The sparrows are greatly in the majority, but they do not for that reason attempt to lord it over the other birds or to exclude them from the feast laid out for them each morning. Every day I see dozens of these alert and active birds feeding peaceably side by side with bulbuls and doves, with sometimes a blackbird or two, a pair of tomtits, a little flock of munias or some azure-winged magpies coming for their share of the food. True, blackbirds are inclined to be a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.