Translator’s Note
This is the first of the four volumes containing Fabre’s essays on Beetles, the order of insects to which, if we judge by his output, he devoted the longest study. It will be followed in due course by The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, The Life of the Weevil, and More Beetles. These three, however, will be issued, not in immediate succession, but turn by turn with books upon other insects; for the Souvenirs entomologiques, from which all or nearly all this material is taken, are still far from being exhausted.
Of the eighteen chapters that make up the present volume, some have appeared, either complete or in a more or less abbreviated form, in various interesting illustrated miscellanies published independently of the Collected Edition. Part of the Author’s Preface and the chapters entitled ‘The Sacred Beetle’ and ‘The Sacred Beetle in Captivity’ will be found in Insect Life, prepared for Messrs. Macmillan and Co. by the author of Mademoiselle Mori. Similarly, the next three chapters on the Sacred Beetle, the two treating of the Spanish Copris, the chapter on the Onthophagi and Oniticelli, and the first two chapters on the Geotrupes form part of The Life and Love of the Insect, translated by myself for Messrs. Adam and Charles Black and published in America by the Macmillan Co. Lastly, The Sisyphus: the Instinct of Paternity occurs in Mr. Fisher Unwin’s Social Life in the Insect World, translated by Mr. Bernard Miall and [[xviii]]published in America by the Century Co. These chapters are all included in the Collected Edition by arrangement with the publishers named.
It remains for me (I grieve to say, for the last time) to acknowledge my debt to the late Miss Frances Rodwell, my very capable assistant, who did so much to assist me in preparing this and most of the previous volumes. Her too early death, in the winter of this year, was an occasion of sorrow, and a great loss to many besides myself.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea, 26th April 1919. [[xix]]
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