For although there would seem to be no reason why they should not continue to grow to gigantic size under favorable conditions--yet they do not.

They reach a size beyond which they do not develop.
"Instead, they bud--give birth, in fact--to smaller ones, which increase until they reach the size of the preceding generation.

And like the children of man and animals, these younger generations grow on precisely as their progenitors! "Very well, then--we arrive at the conception of a metallically crystalline being, which by some explosion of the force of evolution has burst from the to us familiar and apparently inert stage into these Things that hold us.

And is there any greater difference between the forms with which we are familiar and them than there is between us and the crawling amphibian which is our remote ancestor?
Or between that and the amoeba--the little swimming stomach from which it evolved?
Or the amoeba and the inert jelly of the Protobion?
"As for what Ventnor calls a group consciousness I would assume that he means a communal intelligence such as that shown by the bees and the ants--that in the case of the former Maeterlinck calls the 'Spirit of the Hive.' It is shown in their groupings--just as the geometric arrangement of those groupings shows also clearly their crystalline intelligence.
"I submit that in their rapid coordination either for attack or movement or work without apparent communication having passed between the units, there is nothing more remarkable than the swarming of a hive of bees where also without apparent communication just so many waxmakers, nurses, honey-gatherers, chemists, bread-makers, and all the varied specialists of the hive go with the old queen, leaving behind sufficient number of each class for the needs of the young queen.
"All this apportionment is effected without any means of communication that we recognize.

Still it is most obviously intelligent selection.
For if it were haphazard all the honeymakers might leave and the hive starve, or all the chemists might go and the food for the young bees not be properly prepared--and so on and so on." "But metal," he muttered, "and conscious.