The Life of the Caterpillar

THE LIFE OF THE CATERPILLAR
BY J. HENRI FABRE TRANSLATED BY Alexander Teixeira de Mattos FELLOW OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1916
This, the sixth volume of the Collected Edition of Fabre’s Entomological Works in English, is the first that I am preparing for publication since the author’s death, on the 11th of October, 1915, at an exceedingly advanced age. It contains all the essays, fourteen in number, which he wrote on Butterflies and Moths, or their caterpillars.
Three of these, the chapters entitled The Great Peacock , The Banded Monk and The Sense of Smell , are included under the titles of The Great Peacock , The Oak Eggar and A Truffle-hunter: the Bolboceras Gallicus in a volume of miscellaneous extracts from the Souvenirs entomologiques translated by Mr. Bernard Miall and published by the Century Company. The volume in question is named Social Life in the Insect World ; and I strongly recommend it to the reader, if only because of the excellent photographs from nature with which it is illustrated.
Once more I wish to record my gratitude to Miss Frances Rodwell for the faithful assistance which she has lent me in the preparation of this volume, as in that of all the earlier volumes of the series.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
You voracious little creatures, if I let you have your way, I should soon be robbed of the murmur of my once so leafy pines! Today I will seek compensation for all the trouble I have taken. Let us make a compact. You have a story to tell. Tell it me; and for a year, for two years or longer, until I know more or less all about it, I shall leave you undisturbed, even at the cost of lamentable suffering to the pines.
And first of all the egg, which Réaumur did not see. In the first fortnight of August, let us inspect the lower branches of the pines, on a level with our eyes. If we pay the least attention, we soon discover, here and there, on the foliage, certain little whitish cylinders spotting the dark green. These are the Bombyx’ eggs: each cylinder is the cluster laid by one mother.