BEES CAN'T FLY, BUT THEY DO: Things That Are Still a Mystery to Science

Though scientists have discovered how bumble bees fly (it involves flapping their wings some 18,000 times a minute), they're still in the dark, according to Knight, as to why some people can walk on hot coals, all snowflakes are hexagonal, cats find their way home from miles away, Australian aborigines have ESP, lemmings self-destruct, and water witching works. It's as motley a lot of mysteries as ever were assembled in the name of science, and in fact science has little to do with Knight's treatment. His two or three pages per mystery barely mention possible explanations though much could be said, for example, about recent laboratory investigations of yogis' mind-over-matter control. Elsewhere he states flatly--take it or leave it--that all aborigines have the ability to know what's going on at a distance; and he tells us that water witching is endorsed by ""no less than five Nobel Prize winners"" (a most unscientific appeal to authority) and reports astounding claims as fact, without citing a source.