Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

He was no less curious concerning the resurrection of the sun, and every time he made an excursion to the Ventoux he was careful not to miss this spectacle; setting out at an early hour from the foot of the mountain, so that he might see the dawn grow bright from the summit of its rocky mass; then the sun, suddenly rising in the morning breeze, and setting fire, little by little, to the Alps of Dauphiné and the hills of Comtat; and the Rhône, far below, slender as a silver thread.

He took infinite pleasure too in drinking his fill of the sublime terrors of the thunderstorm, which he regarded as one of the most magnificent spectacles which nature can offer; not content with observing it through glass, he would open wide the windows at night the better to enjoy the phosphorescence of the atmosphere, the conflagration of the clouds, the bursts of thunder, and all the solemn pomp with which the great purifying phenomenon manifests itself.

But pure observation, as practised by his predecessors, Réaumur and Huber, is often insufficient, or "furnishes only a glimpse of matters."

He had recourse, therefore, to artificial observation of the kind known as experimentation, and we may say that Fabre was really the first to employ the experimental method in the study of the minds of animals.

Near the field of observation, therefore, is the naturalist's workshop, "the animal laboratory," in which such inductions as may be suggested by the doings and the movements of the insects "which roam at liberty amidst the thyme and lavender" are subjected to the test of experiment. It is a great, silent, isolated room, brilliantly lighted by two windows facing south, upon the garden, one at least of which is always kept open that the insects may come and go at liberty.

In the glass-topped boxes of pine which occupy almost the entire height of the whitewashed walls are carefully arranged the collections so patiently amassed; all the entomological fauna of the South of France, and the sea-shells of the Mediterranean; an abundant wealth also of divers rarities; numismatical treasures and fragments of pottery and other prehistorical documents, of which the numerous ossuaries in the neighbourhood of Sérignan, scattered here and there upon the hills, contain many specimens.

At the top, crowning the facade of glass-topped cases like an immense frieze, is the colossal herbarium, the first volumes of which go back to the early youth of their owner; all the flora, both of the Midi and the North, those of the plains and those of the mountains, and all the algae of fresh and salt water.

But it must not be supposed that Fabre attaches any great value to these collections, enormous though the sum of labour which they represent. To him they have been a means of education, a means of organizing and arranging his knowledge, and not of satisfying an idle curiosity; not the amusement of one content with the rind of things. In order to identify at first sight such specimens as one encounters and proposes to examine, one must first of all learn to observe and to see thoroughly, and to school the eyes in the colours and forms peculiar to each individual species.

One may fairly complain of Réaumur, for example, that his knowledge was uncertain and incomplete. Too often he leaves his readers undecided as to the nature of the species whose habits he describes. Fabre himself, by dint of criticizing with so much humour the abuse of classifications, has sometimes allowed himself to fall into the same fault. [(7/28.)] He has taken good care, however, not to neglect the systematic study of species; witness his "Flora of the Vaucluse" and that careful catalogue of Avignon which he has not disdained to republish. [(7/29.)] The truth is that "if we do not know their names the knowledge of the things escapes us" [(7/30.)], and he was profoundly conscious of the truth of this precept of the great Linnaeus.

The middle of the room is entirely occupied by a great table of walnut-wood, on which are arranged bottles, test-tubes, and old sardine-boxes, which Fabre employs in order to watch the evolution of a thousand nameless or doubtful eggs, to observe the labours of their larvae, the creation and the hatching of cocoons, and the little miracles of metamorphosis, "after a germination more wonderful than that of the acorn which makes the oak."