Fabre's Book of Insects

CHAPTER XVI. The Anthrax Fly 249

THE ANTHRAX FLY 249

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SACRED BEETLE Frontispiece

Sometimes the Scarab seems to enter into partnership with a friend

THE CICADA FACING PAGE

In July, when most of the insects in my sunny country are parched with thirst, the Cicada remains perfectly cheerful 26

THE PRAYING MANTIS

A long time ago, in the days of ancient Greece, this insect was named Mantis, or the Prophet 42

PELOPÆUS SPIRIFEX

When finished the work is amber-yellow, and rather reminds one of the outer skin of an onion 80

THE PSYCHES

This is the secret of the walking bundle of sticks. It is a Faggot Caterpillar, belonging to the group known as the Psyches 90

THE SPANISH COPRIS

The burrow is almost filled by three or four ovoid nests, standing one against the other, with the pointed end upwards 116

THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS

The Greek word dectikos means biting, fond of biting. The Decticus is well named. It is eminently an insect given to biting 130

COMMON WASPS

The wasp’s nest is made of a thin, flexible material like brown paper, formed of particles of wood 144

THE FIELD CRICKET

Here is one of the humblest of creatures able to lodge himself to perfection. He has a home; he has a peaceful retreat, the first condition of comfort 180

THE SISYPHUS

The mother harnesses herself in the place of honour, in front. The father pushes behind in the reverse position, head downwards 204

ITALIAN LOCUSTS

“I have buried underground,” she says, “the treasure of the future” 238

THE ANTHRAX FLY

Her delicate suit of downy velvet, from which you take the bloom by merely breathing on it, could not withstand the contact of rough tunnels 258

FABRE’S BOOK OF INSECTS

CHAPTER I. My Work and My Workshop

MY WORK AND MY WORKSHOP

We all have our own talents, our special gifts. Sometimes these gifts seem to come to us from our forefathers, but more often it is difficult to trace their origin.

A goatherd, perhaps, amuses himself by counting little pebbles and doing sums with them. He becomes an astoundingly quick reckoner, and in the end is a professor of mathematics. Another boy, at an age when most of us care only for play, leaves his schoolfellows at their games and listens to the imaginary sounds of an organ, a secret concert heard by him alone. He has a genius for music. A third—so small, perhaps, that he cannot eat his bread and jam without smearing his face—takes a keen delight in fashioning clay into little figures that are amazingly lifelike. If he be fortunate he will some day be a famous sculptor.

To talk about oneself is hateful, I know, but perhaps I may be allowed to do so for a moment, in order to introduce myself and my studies.

From my earliest childhood I have felt drawn towards the things of Nature. It would be ridiculous to suppose that this gift, this love of observing plants and insects, was inherited from my ancestors, who were uneducated people of the soil and observed little but their own cows and sheep. Of my four grandparents only one ever opened a book, and even he was very uncertain about his spelling. Nor do I owe anything to a scientific training. Without masters, without guides, often without books, I have gone forward with one aim always before me: to add a few pages to the history of insects.

As I look back—so many years back!—I can see myself as a tiny boy, extremely proud of my first braces and of my attempts to learn the alphabet. And very well I remember the delight of finding my first bird’s nest and gathering my first mushroom.

One day I was climbing a hill. At the top of it was a row of trees that had long interested me very much. From the little window at home I could see them against the sky, tossing before the wind or writhing madly in the snow, and I wished to have a closer view of them. It was a long climb—ever so long; and my legs were very short. I clambered up slowly and tediously, for the grassy slope was as steep as a roof.

Suddenly, at my feet, a lovely bird flew out from its hiding-place under a big stone. In a moment I had found the nest, which was made of hair and fine straw, and had six eggs laid side by side in it. The eggs were a magnificent azure blue, very bright. This was the first nest I ever found, the first of the many joys which the birds were to bring me. Overpowered with pleasure, I lay down on the grass and stared at it.

Meanwhile the mother-bird was flying about uneasily from stone to stone, crying ”Tack! Tack!” in a voice of the greatest anxiety. I was too small to understand what she was suffering. I made a plan worthy of a little beast of prey. I would carry away just one of the pretty blue eggs as a trophy, and then, in a fortnight, I would come back and take the tiny birds before they could fly away. Fortunately, as I walked carefully home, carrying my blue egg on a bed of moss, I met the priest.

“Ah!” said he. “A Saxicola’s egg! Where did you get it?”

I told him the whole story. “I shall go back for the others,” I said, “when the young birds have got their quill-feathers.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t do that!” cried the priest.

“You mustn’t be so cruel as to rob the poor mother of all her little birds. Be a good boy, now, and promise not to touch the nest.”

From this conversation I learnt two things: first, that robbing birds’ nests is cruel and, secondly, that birds and beasts have names just like ourselves.

“What are the names of all my friends in the woods and meadows?” I asked myself. “And what does Saxicola mean?” Years later I learnt that Saxicola means an inhabitant of the rocks. My bird with the blue eggs was a Stone-chat.

Below our village there ran a little brook, and beyond the brook was a spinney of beeches with smooth, straight trunks, like pillars. The ground was padded with moss. It was in this spinney that I picked my first mushroom, which looked, when I caught sight of it, like an egg dropped on the moss by some wandering hen. There were many others there, of different sizes, forms, and colours. Some were shaped like bells, some like extinguishers, some like cups: some were broken, and were weeping tears of milk: some became blue when I trod on them. Others, the most curious of all, were like pears with a round hole at the top—a sort of chimney whence a whiff of smoke escaped when I prodded their under-side with my finger. I filled my pockets with these, and made them smoke at my leisure, till at last they were reduced to a kind of tinder.

Many a time I returned to that delightful spinney, and learnt my first lessons in mushroom-lore in the company of the Crows. My collections, I need hardly say, were not admitted to the house.

In this way—by observing Nature and making experiments—nearly all my lessons have been learnt: all except two, in fact. I have received from others two lessons of a scientific character, and two only, in the whole course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry.

I owe the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who showed me how to explore the interior of a Snail in a plate filled with water. The lesson was short and fruitful.

My first introduction to chemistry was less fortunate. It ended in the bursting of a glass vessel, with the result that most of my fellow-pupils were hurt, one of them nearly lost his sight, the lecturer’s clothes were burnt to pieces, and the wall of the lecture-room was splashed with stains. Later on, when I returned to that room, no longer as a pupil but as a master, the splashes were still there. On that occasion I learnt one thing at least. Ever after, when I made experiments of that kind, I kept my pupils at a distance.

It has always been my great desire to have a laboratory in the open fields—not an easy thing to obtain when one lives in a state of constant anxiety about one’s daily bread. For forty years it was my dream to own a little bit of land, fenced in for the sake of privacy: a desolate, barren, sun-scorched bit of land, overgrown with thistles and much beloved by Wasps and Bees. Here, without fear of interruption, I might question the Hunting-wasps and others of my friends in that difficult language which consists of experiments and observations. Here, without the long expeditions and rambles that use up my time and strength, I might watch my insects at every hour of the day.

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