TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 



The present volume contains all the essays 

 on Flies, or Diptera, from the Souvenirs ento- 

 mologiques, to which I have added, in order 

 to make the dimensions uniform with those 

 of the other volumes of the series, the purely 

 autobiographical essays comprised in the 

 Souvenirs. These essays, though they have 

 no bearing upon the life of the Fly, are 

 among the most interesting that Henri Fabre 

 has written and will, I am persuaded, make 

 a special appeal to the reader. The chapter 

 entitled The Caddis-worm has been included 

 as following directly upon The Pond. 



Since publishing The Life of the Spider, I 

 was much struck by a passage in Dr. Chalmers 

 Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood 

 of Animals, in which the secretary of the 

 Zoological Society of London says: 



'I have attempted to avoid the use of terms 

 familiar only to students of zoology and to 

 refrain from anatomical detail, but at the 

 same time to refrain from the irritating habit 



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