The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



of opportunity or caprice, without premedi- 

 tated order. But the observer is not always 

 master of his encounters and discoveries, and 

 Fabre wished to give us, in his books, the 

 faithful record of his observations, and 

 afford us the pleasure in our turn of those 

 unexpected encounters, those marvellous dis- 

 coveries which made his life an enchant- 

 ment, and which lend his narrative an in- 

 terest equal to that of the most dramatic 

 romance. 



Yet there has been a selection, a definite 

 arrangement of the vast collection of data 

 collected in the ten volumes of the Souvenirs. 



But this arrangement and this selection are 

 by no means inspired by the official classifi- 

 cations. We may attempt, as many eminent 

 naturalists have done, to class his various 

 monographs in the classic manner. We shall 

 then say, with M. Perrier, that he is not 

 greatly occupied with the Lepidoptera, that 

 he studies more particularly the Hymenop- 

 tera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera, without 

 neglecting the Arachnoids, which are Ar- 

 thropods, not insects properly so called. It 

 is a fact that this singular entomologist pre- 

 fers the horrible Spiders, to whom all the 

 good text-books refuse the name of insect, 

 to the most beautiful Butterflies. It is true 

 326 



