382 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



labour, he never turned. In the following year there appeared in 

 the Annates des sciences naturelles his memoir on Cerceris, which 

 signalises the beginning of his entomological career. While at 

 Avignon he met John Stuart Mill, w^hose love for botany furnished 

 the basis of their remarkable friendship; incidentally he took his' 

 doctor's degree in Natural Sciences at Paris, and his discovery by 

 Victor Drury, the Minister of Public Instruction, was responsible 

 for his distinction as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Little 

 <iid these honours avail him, for during the twenty years during 

 which he stayed at the University of Avignon his salary never 

 changed from £64 per annum. Disappointed, but clinging more 

 tenaciously than ever to his life's pursuit, he settled down near 

 Orange, in the lower Rhone, and subsequently, "after forty years 

 of desperate struggles," he found his Eden at Serignan, a little 

 village in Provence. 



Here for the rest of his life he dwelt; his laboratory was a small 

 tract of wild land "L'Harmas," a "living laboratory," where he 

 studied "non I'insecte mort, macere dans le trois-six, mais I'insecte 

 vivant; un laboratoire ayant pour objet I'instinct, les moeurs, la 

 maniere-de vivre, les travaux, les luttes, la propagation de ce petit 

 monde, avec lequel I'agriculture et la philosophie doivent tres 

 serieusement compter." 



The central feature of Fabre's work was that he studied the 

 living insect and its behaviour, and in this fact lies the chief value 

 of his contribution to entomological knowledge. Never since 

 Reaumur has so wide a range of insects been studied so intensively 

 as we find in- the Souvenirs entomologiqiies; but while Reaumur 

 described with the greatest precision the objects of his patient 

 study, he did not enter into the lives of his insects and their instinc- ^ 

 tive behaviour to the extent that Fabre has accustomed us. And 

 how different their respective lives : Fabre carrying on a perpetual 

 struggle to raise a family in the face of poverty and Reaumur in 

 ease and comfort. It is safe to say that no entomologist in the 

 past has accomplished a work of so unique a character as that of 

 Fabre, and it is unlikely that the future will hold another man 

 who will equal his achievement. In 1878 he was able to assemble 

 the results of about twenty-five years' labour in the form of the 



