The Life of the Fly 



of assuming that my readers have no know- 

 ledge, no dictionaries and no other books.' 



I began to wonder whether I had gone too 

 far in simplifying the terminology of the 

 Fabre essays and in appending explanatory 

 footnotes to the inevitable number of outland- 

 ish names of insects. But my doubts vanished 

 when I thought upon Fabre's own words in 

 the first chapter of this book: 



'If I write for men of learning, for philo- 

 sophers ... I write above all things for the 

 young. I want to make them love the natural 

 history which you make them hate; and that 

 is why, while keeping strictly to the domain 

 of truth, I avoid your scientific prose, which 

 too often, alas, seems borrowed from some 

 Iroquois idiom !' 



And I can but apologize if I have been too 

 lavish with my notes to this chapter in par- 

 ticular, which introduces to us, as in a sort of 

 litany, a multitude of the insects studied by 

 the author. For the rest, I have continued 

 my system of references to the earlier Fabre 

 books, whether translated by myself or others. 



Of the following essays, The Harmas has 

 appeared, under another title, in The Daily 



8 



