The Collaborators 



would care to discuss in your book some of 

 the more complicated and marvellous in- 

 stincts. It is an ungrateful task . . . But 

 if you discuss some of these instincts, it seems 

 to me that you could not take a more inter- 

 esting point than that of the animals that 

 paralyse their prey, as Fabre has described 

 in his astonishing memoir in the Annales 

 des sciences naturelles, a memoir which he 

 has since amplified in his admirable Sou- 

 venirs." 



When he wrote this Darwin was ac- 

 quainted only with the first volume of the 

 Souvenirs. 1 What would he have said if 

 he could have enjoyed the whole of the 

 learned entomologist's masterly work? 



In reading this first volume, the attention 

 of the English naturalist had been especially 

 struck by the operations of the Hunting 

 Wasps, which were peculiarly upsetting to his 

 theories. 



Darwin was visibly preoccupied by the 

 problem of instinct as propounded by the ir- 

 refutable observations of the French ento- 

 mologist, but he did not despair of finding 

 a solution in conformity with his system. 

 Fabre, on his side, believed that his position 



1 Darwin died in 1882, and the second volume of the 

 Souvenirs appeared in 1883. 



287 



