Nowadays, people lay everything to heredity; that is, they say that human beings and animals both receive their special talents from their ancestors, who have perhaps been developing them through many generations. I do not altogether agree with this theory. I am going to tell you my own story to show that I did not inherit my passion for insects from any of my ancestors.
Neither my grandfather nor my grandmother on my mother’s side cared in the least about insects. I did not know my grandfather, but I know that he had a hard time making a living, and I am sure the only attention he paid to an insect, if he met it, was to crush it under his foot. Grandmother, who could not even read, certainly cared nothing about science or insects. If, sometimes, when rinsing her salad at the tap, she found a Caterpillar on the lettuce leaves, with a start of fright she would fling the loathsome thing away.
My other grandparents, my father’s father and mother, I knew well. Indeed, I went to live with them when I was five or six years old, because my father and mother were too poor to take care of me. These grandparents lived on a poverty-stricken farm away out in the country. They did not know how to read; they had never opened a book in their lives. Grandfather knew a great deal about cows and sheep, but nothing about anything else. How dumfounded he would have been to learn that, in the distant future, one of his family would spend his time studying insignificant insects! If he had guessed that that lunatic was myself, seated at the table by his side, what a smack I should have caught in the neck!
“The idea of wasting one’s time with that nonsense!” he would have thundered.
Grandmother, dear soul, was too busy with washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household, spinning, attending to the chickens, curds and whey, butter, and pickles, to think of anything else. Sometimes, in the evenings, she used to tell us stories, as we sat around the fire, about the Wolf who lived on the moors. I should have very much liked to see this Wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep, but I never did. I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother; it was in your lap that I found consolation for my first sorrows. You have handed down to me, perhaps, a little of your physical vigor, a little of your love for work; but certainly you did not give me my love for insects.
Nor did either of my own parents. My mother was quite illiterate; my father had been to school as a child, he knew how to read and write a little, but he was too busy making a living to have room for any other cares. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the encouragement I received from him.
And yet I began to observe, to inquire into things, when I was still almost a baby. My first memories of this tendency will amuse you. One day when I was five or six years old I was standing on the moor in front of our farm, clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels: I remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of string,—a handkerchief, I am sorry to say, often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.
My face was turned toward the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinated me. No Moth was ever more attracted by the light of the lamp. As I stood there, I was asking myself a question. With what was I enjoying the glorious radiance, with my mouth or my eyes? Reader, do not smile: this was true scientific curiosity. I opened my mouth wide and closed my eyes: the glory disappeared. I opened my eyes and shut my mouth: the glory reappeared. I repeated the performance, with the same result. The question was solved: I had learned by deduction that I see the sun with my eyes. Oh, what a discovery! That evening, I told the whole house about it. Grandmother smiled lovingly at my simplicity: the others laughed at it.
Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little Bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter and that quickly. True, there is a Wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. Let’s go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind that clump of gloom.