JEAN-HENRI FABRE 



William Morton Wheeler 



Through the death of Jean-Henri Fabre on October 11th, 

 1915, the world has lost its greatest entomologist, a man who 

 combined in an extraordinary degree the gifts of a virile and 

 penetrating observer and those of a literary artist of high dis- 

 tinction. During the greater portion of a life of poverty, ex- 

 tending over a period of 92 years, he ceaselessly devoted himself 

 to an intensive study of insect behavior and to the recording of 

 his observations in such fascinating language that Victor Hugo 

 styled him the " Homer of the insects." 



Like the life of his countryman Latreille, who preceded him 

 as the " prince of entomologists," Fabre's life was uneventful. 

 His biography has been written by a sympathetic admirer, 

 C. V. Legros, and rendered into English by another admirer, 

 Bernard Miall, but from many passages scattered through 

 Fabre's great work', the " Souvenirs Entomologiques " it is 

 possible to glean an even more illuminating and intimate knowl- 

 edge of his powerful individuality and of his methods of working 

 and thinking. He was born of humble peasant parents on 

 December 22nd, 1823, in the hamlet of Saint Leon, in the part 

 of the Provence known as the Haute-Rouergue. Through dili- 

 gent application to the classics, physics, chemistry and mathe- 

 matics in the rather mediaeval schools of his day he prepared 

 himself to become a teacher. At 19 he entered on this profes- 

 sion in the College of Carpentras and in 1850 accepted a posi- 

 tion as professor in the lycee of Ajaccio, Corsica, at a salary of 

 £72. Here he met the naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who seems 

 to have had an important influence in determining his career 

 as a biological investigator. Even as a boy, however, Fabre 

 had been greatly interested in insects, so that Moquin-Tandon 

 probably only helped to reveal to him his innate aptitude for 

 observation and experimentation. He realized that he had a 

 genius for observing small animals, and from that time forth, 



