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INSECT ADVENTURES

Petty truths, I shall be told, those presented by the habits of a
spider or a grasshopper. There are no petty truths today; there is but
one truth, whose looking-glass to our uncertain eyes seems broken,
though its every fragment, whether reflecting the evolution of a planet
or the flight of a bee, contains the supreme law.

                                                     MAURICE MAETERLINCK

[Illustration: "What a day it was when I first became a herdsman of
ducks!"]




  INSECT ADVENTURES

  BY
  J. HENRI FABRE

  _Selections from Alexander Teixeira de Mattos'
  Translation of Fabre's "Souvenirs Entomologiques"_

  RETOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
  BY
  LOUISE SEYMOUR HASBROUCK

  ILLUSTRATED BY
  ELIAS GOLDBERG

  [Colophon]

  NEW YORK
  DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
  1917

  COPYRIGHT, 1917,
  By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, Inc.




PREFACE


Jean Henri Fabre, author of the long series of "Souvenirs
Entomologiques" from which these studies are taken, was a French
school-teacher and scientist whose peculiar gift for the observation
and description of insect life won for him the title of the "insects'
Homer." A distinguished English critic says of him, "Fabre is the
wisest man, and the best read in the book of nature, of whom the
centuries have left us any record." The fact that he was mainly
self-taught, and that his life was an unending struggle with poverty
and disappointment, increases our admiration for his wonderful
achievements in natural science.

A very interesting account of his early years, given by himself, will
be found in Chapter XVII of this volume. The salaries of rural teachers
and professors were extremely small in France during the last century,
and Fabre, who married young, could barely support his large family.
Nature study was not in the school curriculum, and it was years before
he could devote more than scanty spare hours to the work. At the age
of thirty-two, however, he published the first volume of his insect
studies. It attracted the attention of scientists and brought him a
prize from the French Institute. Other volumes were published from time
to time, but some of Fabre's fellow scientists were displeased because
the books were too interesting! They feared, said Fabre, "lest a page
that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of
the truth." He defended himself from this extraordinary complaint in a
characteristic way.

"Come here, one and all of you," he addressed his friends, the insects.
"You, the sting-bearers, and you, the wing-cased armor-clads--take up
my defense and bear witness in my favor. Tell of the intimate terms on
which I live with you, of the patience with which I observe you, of
the care with which I record your actions. Your evidence is unanimous;
yes, my pages, though they bristle not with hollow formulas or learned
smatterings, are the exact narrative of facts observed, neither more
nor less; and whoso cares to question you in his turn will obtain the
same replies.

"And then, my dear insects, if you cannot convince these good people,
because you do not carry the weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say
to them:

"'You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you turn it into an
object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labor in
a torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observation under the
blue sky to the song of the cicadas; you subject cell and protoplasm to
chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you
pry into death, I pry into life.... I write above all for the young. I
want to make them love the natural history which you make them hate;
and that is why, while keeping strictly in the domain of truth, I avoid
your scientific prose, which too often, alas, seems borrowed from some
Iroquois idiom.'"

Fabre, though an inspiring teacher, had no talent for pushing himself,
and did not advance beyond an assistant professorship at a tiny salary.
The other professors at Avignon, where he taught for twenty years,
were jealous of him because his lectures on natural history attracted
much attention, and nicknamed him "the Fly." He was turned out of his
house at short notice because the owners, two maiden ladies, had been
influenced by his enemies, who considered his teachings in natural
history irreligious. Many years later, the invaluable textbooks he
had written were discontinued from use in the schools because they
contained too much religion! A process which he invented for the
extraction of dye from madder flowers, by which he hoped to make
himself independent, proved unprofitable on account of the appearance
on the market of the cheaper aniline dyes.

Though unknown during most of his lifetime to the world at large, Fabre
through his writings gained the friendship of several celebrated men.
Charles Darwin called him the "incomparable observer." The Minister of
Education in France invited him to Paris and had him made a Chevalier
of the Legion of Honor, and presented him to the Emperor, Napoleon III.
He was offered the post of tutor to the Prince Imperial, but preferred
his country life and original researches, even though they meant
continued poverty.

At last, after forty years of drudgery, Fabre secured from his
textbooks a small independent income, which released him from teaching
and enabled him to buy at Serignan a house and garden of his own, and
a small piece of waste ground, dedicated to thistles and insects--a
"cursed ground," he wrote, "which no one would have as a gift to sow
with a pinch of turnip seed," but "an earthly paradise for bees and
wasps"--and, on that account, for him also.

"It is a little late, O my pretty insects," he adds--he was at this time
over sixty; "I greatly fear the peach is offered to me only when I am
beginning to have no teeth wherewith to eat it." He lived, however, to
spend many years at his chosen studies.

During the last years of his life his fame spread, and in 1910, in
his eighty-eighth year, some of his admirers arranged a jubilee
celebration for him at Serignan. Many famous men attended, and letters
and telegrams poured in from all parts of the world. He died five years
later, at the age of ninety-two.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

      I My First Pond                                                 17
     II The Caddis-Worm                                               31
    III The Mason-Bees                                                37
     IV Bees, Cats and Red Ants                                       49
      V The Mining Bees                                               62
     VI The Leaf-Cutting Bees                                         78
    VII The Cotton-Bees and Resin-Bees                                85
   VIII The Hairy Sand-Wasp                                           93
     IX The Wasp and the Cricket                                     106
      X The Fly-Hunting Wasp                                         113
     XI Parasites                                                    125
    XII Fly Scavengers                                               133
   XIII The Pine Caterpillar                                         135
    XIV The Cabbage Caterpillar                                      161
     XV The Great Peacock Moths                                      167
    XVI The Truffle-Hunting Beetle                                   171
   XVII The Boy Who Loved Insects                                    177
  XVIII The Banded Spider                                            199
    XIX The Tarantula                                                209
     XX The Clotho Spider                                            236
    XXI The Spiders' Telegraph-Wire                                  242
   XXII The Crab Spider                                              248
  XXIII The Labyrinth Spider                                         257
   XXIV The Building of a Spider's Web                               266
    XXV The Geometry of a Spider's Web                               276




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE

  What a Day It Was When I First Became a Herdsman
  of Ducks! (_Frontispiece_)                                           4

  I Think of the King's Crown of the Princesses'
  Necklace                                                            25

  The Flowers Which Deck the Mountain Streams
  With Gold Supply Her With Sugary Liquid
 