This little volume introduces the work of a great French naturalist to
the reader of English. Réaumur, another Frenchman, is the greatest
naturalist devoting himself to the observation of insects the world has
yet seen. His six quarto volumes—Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des
insectes—were published between 1734 and 1742. J.-H. Fabre, who happily
is still with us, is second only to Réaumur in this part of the great
field of Natural History.
Though compatriots the two men are remarkably different in the nature
of their genius. Réaumur, stately and slow, both discursive and
diffuse. Fabre,—styled by Charles Darwin the immortal Fabre,—a most
patient, indefatigable observer, ready to sacrifice everything to the
carrying on of his work, but making deductions too rapidly from his
observations, and taking a philosophical position from which he refuses
to budge, even though he stand alone among the naturalists of this
generation.
Fabre’s great merit is his graphic portraiture of the living insect as
it really is. This proves to be very different from insect life as it
is usually supposed to be by the uninstructed, and as it is only too
frequently represented to be in books. In the volume now offered to the
reader he is almost entirely concerned with the instinct of
Hymenoptera, the highest of the insect world in this respect. His
studies of this subject have been continued in several other volumes,
and he has also included in the series the results of many years of
observation of the habits of other and very different insects.
His philosophical position may be briefly stated to be a determined
refusal to recognise evolution as a legitimate idea. In this we may
think him wrong; but it must be admitted that his views form a valuable
antithesis to those of the many evolutionists who take the position
that all that remains for the naturalist to do is to repeat the words
Natural Selection and variation, and declare that thereby we understand
the Cosmos.
Fabre is a difficult writer to translate. Probably no one has ever
written on this subject with equal brilliancy and vivacity. But he is
the most Gallic of Frenchmen. If his words are literally translated,
they scarcely make English; if freely translated, the charm of his
diction is too easily missed.
We hope that this volume may induce the student to read Fabre’s
subsequent volumes. [1] Taken altogether they are, if not superior, at
least not inferior to this one—preferred simply because it is the first
of the series.
In his works there is a good deal of delightful autobiography. Starting
as a child amidst the direst poverty, he has become a highly
accomplished man, a great naturalist, a brilliant writer; and he has
done this with a complete contempt for money, and a great indifference
to the other rewards that Society is ready to bestow for such work.