The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters 

 of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers 

 of cotton goods, collectors of pieces cut from a 

 leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in paste- 

 board, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring 

 wood, miners digging underground galleries, work- 

 ers in goldbeater's skin, and many more. 



If 1 tried to continue this record of the guests 

 of my thistles, it would muster almost the whole 

 of the honey-yielding tribe. A learned entomologist 

 of Bordeaux, Professor Perez, to whom I submit 

 the naming of my prizes, once asked me if I had 

 any special means of hunting, to send him so many 

 rarities and even novelties. The whole secret of 

 my hunting is reduced to my dense nursery of 

 thistles and centauries.^ 



What has become of the days when the 

 entomologist lived far from his beloved in- 

 sects, when he had to seek them in all direc- 

 tions, and even to chase them through fields 

 and vineyards, at the risk of alarming the 

 passers-by or having a crow to pluck with 

 the garde-champetre? To-day the insects are 

 always there, within reach of his eyes and 

 his hand. He has hardly to look for them 

 nowadays. They come to him, into his gar- 

 den and even into his house. 



All Fabre's preferences are for the insect, 



1 Souvenirs, ii., pp. i-8. The Life of the Fly, chap, i., 

 "The Harmas." 



2l6 



