[22] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 176–178. The Mason Bees, chap. xi., “The Jeucoopes.” [↑]
CHAPTER XX
FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)
In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of the Souvenirs, we have broadly sketched the general characteristics of his work. In order to complete our task, and to give a clear and comprehensive idea of his art, we will now venture upon a rapid analysis not of the author’s attitude but of the content of his works.
The Souvenirs entomologiques bear a sub-title which perfectly describes their essential and characteristic elements. They are offered as “Studies in the Instincts and Habits of the Insects,” which promise us both theoretical considerations and records of facts:
At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very [[325]]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.[1]
François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.[2]
Fabre’s work is that of a conscientious architect who has sought to keep the shrubberies and alleys of his garden in strict order, but the racial poet lurking behind the architect has released so many blackbirds that he seems to have destroyed the tidiness of the garden. Just at first, the Souvenirs produce somewhat the same impression as the harmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will [[326]]of opportunity or caprice, without premeditated order. But the observer is not always master of his encounters and discoveries, and Fabre wished to give us, in his books, the faithful record of his observations, and afford us the pleasure in our turn of those unexpected encounters, those marvellous discoveries which made his life an enchantment, and which lend his narrative an interest equal to that of the most dramatic romance.
Yet there has been a selection, a definite arrangement of the vast collection of data collected in the ten volumes of the Souvenirs.
But this arrangement and this selection are by no means inspired by the official classifications. We may attempt, as many eminent naturalists have done, to class his various monographs in the classic manner. We shall then say, with M. Perrier, that he is not greatly occupied with the Lepidoptera, that he studies more particularly the Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera, without neglecting the Arachnoids, which are Arthropods, not insects properly so called. It is a fact that this singular entomologist prefers the horrible Spiders, to whom all the good text-books refuse the name of insect, to the most beautiful Butterflies. It is true [[327]]that he is especially attracted by the four-winged flies, the Wasps and wild Bees, the Dung-Beetles and Necrophori, the Mantes, Grasshoppers, and Scorpions; but this is not because of any particular affection for this group or on account of their quality of Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera; for many of their congeners are neglected and many insects are selected out of their order. This is bound to be the case, for the official classification is conceived on totally different lines to his own, going by the form of the insect without heeding its actions and its habits. It is much the same with the official nomenclature.