INSECT ADVENTURES
Petty truths, I shall be told, those presented by the habitsof a spider or a grasshopper. There are no petty truthstoday; there is but one truth, whose looking-glass to ouruncertain eyes seems broken, though its every fragment,whether reflecting the evolution of a planet or the flightof a bee, contains the supreme law.Maurice Maeterlinck
“What a day it was when I first became a herdsmanof ducks!”
INSECTADVENTURES
Selections from Alexander Teixeira de Mattos’Translation of Fabre’s “Souvenirs Entomologiques”
RETOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY
LOUISE SEYMOUR HASBROUCK
ILLUSTRATED BY
ELIAS GOLDBERG
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, Inc.
PREFACE
Jean Henri Fabre, author of the long seriesof “Souvenirs Entomologiques” from which thesestudies are taken, was a French school-teacher andscientist whose peculiar gift for the observation anddescription of insect life won for him the title of the“insects’ Homer.” A distinguished English criticsays of him, “Fabre is the wisest man, and the bestread in the book of nature, of whom the centurieshave left us any record.” The fact that he wasmainly self-taught, and that his life was an unendingstruggle with poverty and disappointment, increasesour admiration for his wonderful achievements innatural science.
A very interesting account of his early years, givenby himself, will be found in Chapter XVII of thisvolume. The salaries of rural teachers and professorswere extremely small in France during the lastcentury, and Fabre, who married young, could barelysupport his large family. Nature study was notin the school curriculum, and it was years before hecould devote more than scanty spare hours to thework. At the age of thirty-two, however, he publishedthe first volume of his insect studies. It attractedthe attention of scientists and brought hima prize from the French Institute. Other volumeswere published from time to time, but some ofFabre’s fellow scientists were displeased because thebooks were too interesting! They feared, saidFabre, “lest a page that is read without fatigueshould not always be the expression of the truth.”He defended himself from this extraordinary complaintin a characteristic way.
“Come here, one and all of you,” he addressed hisfriends, the insects. “You, the sting-bearers, andyou, the wing-cased armor-clads—take up my defenseand bear witness in my favor. Tell of the intimateterms on which I live with you, of the patiencewith which I observe you, of the care with which Irecord your actions. Your evidence is unanimous;yes, my pages, though they bristle not with hollowformulas or learned smatterings, are the exact narrativeof facts observed, neither more nor less; andwhoso cares to question you in his turn will obtainthe same