More Beetles

MORE BEETLES
MORE BEETLES
BY J. HENRI FABRE TRANSLATED BY Alexander Teixeira de Mattos FELLOW OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1922
Copyright, 1922 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
This, if we count The Life of the Weevil as the third, is the fourth and last volume on Beetles in the Collected English Edition of Fabre’s entomological works. The first was entitled The Sacred Beetle and Others ; the second The Glow-worm and Other Beetles .
Of the fourteen chapters, part of the four devoted to the Minotaur appeared, in an abbreviated form, in The Life and Love of the Insect , prepared by myself for Messrs. Adam and Charles Black and published in America by the Macmillan Co. Similarly, The Pine Cockchafer and the two chapters on the Gold Beetles occur in Mr. Fisher Unwin’s Social Life in the Insect World (published in America by the Century Co.), translated by Mr. Bernard Miall, whom I take this opportunity of thanking for his assistance in the translation of the present volume. These seven chapters are included in the Collected Edition by arrangement with the publishers named.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
My hermitage boasts a long, wide lilac-walk. When May is here and the two rows of bushes, bending beneath their load of clustering blooms, form pointed arches overhead, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the loveliest festival of the year is celebrated beneath the kisses of the morning sun: a peaceful festival, with no flags flapping at the windows, no expenditure of gun-powder, no drunken squabbles; a festival of simple creatures disturbed neither by the harsh brass band of the dance nor by the shouts of the crowd acclaiming the amateur who has just won a silk handkerchief at the hop, skip and jump. Vulgar delights of drinks and crackers, how far removed are you from this solemn celebration!
These thick-set, richly variegated Moths are Sesiæ, with wings not dusted with scales throughout. The bare zones, like so much transparent gauze, contrast with the covered zones and are an added beauty. The sober sets off the magnificent.