The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



This manner of seeing country is within my 

 means, always excepting the post-chaise, which is 

 too difficult to drive through the bushes. I go 

 the circuit of my enclosure over and over again, 

 a hundred times, by short stages; I stop here and 

 I stop there; patiently I put questions and, at long 

 intervals, I receive some scrap of a reply. 



The smallest insect village has become familiar 

 to me : I know each fruit-branch where the Pray- 

 ing Mantis perches; each bush where the pale 

 Italian Cricket strums amid the calmness of the 

 summer nights; each downy plant scraped by the 

 Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cluster 

 of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter. 



If cruising among the nooks and corners of the 

 garden do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample 

 profit. I double the cape of the neighbouring 

 hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into 

 relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn, 

 the Geotrupes, the Copris, the Decticus, the 

 Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short with a 

 host of tribes the telling of whose story would ex- 

 haust a lifetime. Certainly, I have enough and even 

 too much to do with my near neighbours, without 

 leaving home to rove in distant lands. 



Nevertheless, it were well to compare what hap- 

 pens under our eyes with that which happens else- 

 where; it were excellent to see how, in the same 

 guild of workers, the fundamental instinct varies 

 with climatic conditions. 



Then my longing to travel returns, vainer to-day 

 than ever, unless one could find a seat on that car- 

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