Fabre's Writings 



rather uneasy admiration. Leon Dufour, the 

 patriarch of entomology in those days, wrote 

 the author a most eulogistic and encouraging 

 letter; happy to have directed his researches 

 toward discoveries which he himself had not 

 suspected, the venerable scientist emphati- 

 cally exhorted his young friend to continue 

 his journey along the path that was opening 

 before him, a path so full of promise. 



Some time after this he published another 

 entomological work which was by no means 

 calculated to disappoint the hopes aroused by 

 the first It dealt with an insect related to 

 the Cantharides, the Sitaris humeralis, and it 

 contained matter no less unsuspected and no 

 less astonishing than the first. 



The impression produced was all the more 

 profound in that the miracle of instinct was 

 here accompanied by a physiological miracle, 

 a phenomenon of metamorphosis wholly un- 

 known, to describe which Fabre hit upon the 

 very happy term hypermetamorphosis. To 

 the ordinary series of transformations 

 through which the insect passes in proceed- 

 ing from the larval condition to that of the 

 nymph and the perfect insect, this strange 

 little beast adds another as a prelude to the 

 first, so that the larva of the Sitaris passes 

 through four different forms, known as the 

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