The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



siasm than by the hoary everlasting. When we 

 came down from the cold mountain-top, my mind 

 was made up: mathematics would be abandoned. 

 On the day before his departure, he said to me: 

 ' You interest yourself in shells. That is some- 

 thing, but it is not enough. You must look into 

 the animal itself. I will show you how it's 

 done." 



And, taking a sharp pair of scissors from the 

 family workbasket, and a couple of needles stuck 

 into a bit of vine-shoot, which served as a make- 

 shift handle, he showed me the anatomy of a Snail 

 in a soup-plate filled with water. Gradually he 

 explained and sketched the organs which he spread 

 before my eyes. This was the only, never-to-be- 

 forgotten lesson in natural history that I ever re- 

 ceived in my life. 1 



Fabre was a wonderful and indefatigable 

 self-teacher; a truly self-made man. The im- 

 pulse had been given, but he had everything, 

 or almost everything, to learn of the living 

 world of Nature. The way was open, but 

 the whole length of it had to be travelled. 

 He trod it henceforth with a high courage, 

 for he was marching beneath the star that 

 the Master of minds had hung in the dawn 

 of his days above the hills of Lavaysse; the 



1 Souvenirs, VI., pp. 63-66. 

 vi., "My Schooling." 



The Life of the Fly, chap. 

 122 



