It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable scientist Léonĭufour, 1 on the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis-beetles. Pages of an entomological essay that had fallen into my hands I forget how. And so I was forgetting the povertyĪnd anxieties of a professor’s life, amid my books, when I chanced to turn over the Where education was concerned such was the edict of our government red-tape: I wasĪn irregular, the offspring of my solitary studies. Such was the disgraceful parsimony of the day Up diplomas and for a quarter of a century performing services of uncontested merit, was receivingįor himself and his family a stipend of sixteen hundred francs, or less than the wages Of the morrow: those heavy cares of a poor professor of physics who, after piling One winter evening, when the rest of the household was asleep, as I sat reading besideĪ stove whose ashes were still warm, my book made me forget for a while the cares Our eyes, decide our future and plant us in the appointed groove. The most casual circumstances, a few lines that happen somehow to come before Our hands those books which mark the beginning of a new era in the evolution of our Wide the gates of a new world wherein our intellectual powers are henceforth to beĮmployed they are the spark which lights the fuel on a hearth doomed, without itsĪid, to remain indefinitely bleak and cold. Up horizons hitherto undreamed of and mark an epoch in our mental life. There are for each one of us, according to his turn of mind, certain books that open Natural History Museum, who has been kind enough to set me right on many an entomological Has rendered me much valuable assistance, and to Mr. It is a pleasure once more to express my thanks to Miss Frances Rodwell, who, as usual, Light in the English Review, and ‘An Unknown Sense,’ in an abbreviated form, in the Daily Mail. Of the remainder, ‘The Modern Theory of Instinct’ first saw the Macmillan and Co., by arrangement with whom I am now permitted to retranslateĪnd republish them for the purpose of this collected and definite edition of Fabre’sĮntomological works. of the Souvenirs Entomologiques prepared by the author of Mademoiselle Mori for Messrs. The first seventeen chapters of the present book appeared some years ago, wholly or The former will include the chapters on the Common or Social Wasp. The others will be entitled The Mason-Wasps and More Hunting Wasps. Henri Fabre’s essays on Wasps will fill three volumes in all, of which this is theįirst.
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