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THE BNTOMOLOGIST. 



A naturalist of the old school, his writing has little in common 

 with that of the pioneers in the then newly exploited realm of 

 research invaded by Darwin, Bates, and Wallace. With the problems 

 of evolution, the meaning of mimicry and such like he was wholly 

 unsympathetic. The theories and speculations of the museum and 

 the laboratory interested him not at all ; the labour of his love was 

 pursued in the field where he searched out the lives of the little 

 people of earth and air with the eternal patience of Genius. 



It is instructive as a commentary on the retiring nature of the 

 greatest Erench naturalist of the nineteeth century that his merits 

 were only borne in upon the world at large towards the close of his 

 career. He was not elected an honorary member of the Entomo- 

 logical Society of France until 1894, when he was past seventy ; ten 

 years later the Society of London honoured itself by placing the name 

 of Jean Henri Fabre among the twelve Internationals who head 

 the list of Fellows. In 1912 the French Government made him 

 aTgrant of £400, honoris causa, following the subscription raised in 

 1910 by his admirers, and the issue of the charming medal designed 

 to his memory which bears a faithful portrait of the Poet of Science. 



The ten volumes of the ' Souvenirs Bntomologiques ' (Ch. Dela- 

 grave, Paris) contain two hundred and nineteen studies of insects 

 generally ; only a few papers are devoted to Lepidoptera ; among 

 them " La Procossionnaire du Pin " (6™^ s6r., xviii-xxiii), " La Grand 

 Paon" (7""' s6r., xxiii), and " Le Cossus" (10™^ s6r., vi). "La Vie 

 des Insectes" consists of selections from the same work. Besides 

 which have been issued a number of his lectures on different branches 

 of science, chiefly entomology and botany (first published in separate 

 form in 1873) ; and the causeries on similar subjects for young people, 

 dehvered by him as " Uncle Paul." 



Of these several works I cannot do better than quote the eulogy 

 conferred on them by Mr. Paul Thureau-Dangin on the occasion 

 when the Acad6mie Frangaise awarded the Prix N6e to the author : — 

 " Lisez ces recits, vous en gouterez le charme, la bonhomie, la sim- 

 plicite, la vie, vous vous passionerez a cette science aimable qui se 

 fait au jour le jour, dans les belles heures d'6t6 ' au chant des 

 cigales,' k cette science qui n'a rien de germanique, oh non ! qui est 

 bien latine, virgiUenne par moments, qui donne la main a la poesie, 

 qui est, enfin, si p6n6tr6e d'amour qu'il semble, parfois, que de ces 

 humbles souvenirs entomologiques, s'6l6ve une strophe du Cantique 

 des Creatures." 



A biography entitled 'J. H. Fabre, Naturaliste,' by J. V. Legros, 

 Paris, appeared in 1913, and apparently a translation of the same 

 work entitled 'J. H. Fabre, Poet of Science,' 1913. The principal 

 English editions of his works are ' Insect Life,' translated by 

 Margaret Roberts, edited by F. Merrifield (Macmillan & Co., 1901); 

 ' The Life and Love of the Insect,' translated by A. Texeira de 

 Mattos (A. & C. Black, 1911); 'The Works of J. H. Fabre,' trans- 

 lated by A. Texeira de Mattos, with preface by Maurice Maeterlinck 

 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1912), in progress ; ' Social Life in the Insect 

 World,' translated by Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin, 1912). 



H. R.-B. 



