Insect Adventures

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
“What a day it was when I first became a herdsman of ducks!”
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
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, Inc.

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.
“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.