The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



We are, indeed, glad to think that if he 

 was unduly overlooked at a later time, he 

 was at least known and admired at an early 

 period in Aveyron, and that as early as 1866 

 his class books were especially recommended 

 to the attention of our young schoolmasters 

 at the Normal College of Rodez. They 

 could have had none better conceived or com- 

 piled. Would to heaven our public school- 

 masters had always been as happily inspired 

 or as well advised in the choice of their text- 

 books ! Would to heaven that, instead of 

 the dismal and misleading suggestions of ma- 

 terialism and impiety, there were still a place 

 in the manuals of science, put in the hands 

 of our children, for reflections as sane and as 

 lofty as these. " By their practical side the 

 sciences verge upon agriculture, medicine, and 

 industry; but they have before all a moral 

 advantage which is not shared in the same 

 degree by any other branch of human knowl- 

 edge : in that by giving us a knowledge of the 

 created universe they uplift the soul and 

 nourish the mind with noble and salutary 

 thoughts." * 



to Provence, which has become his second country; he 

 merely regrets that we in our " loyal kingdom " have too 

 long allowed our good friends of the Empire to monop- 

 olise him. 



1 Cours elementaire d'hisloire naturelle: Zoologie, p. i, 

 5th edition. 



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