The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



five-franc pieces, which, placed at the bottom of 

 the secret hiding-place in the wardrobe, in an old 

 stocking, would have afforded relief in difficult 

 times. Full of their woes, they unfolded before 

 my eyes a scrap of flannel on which the little crea- 

 tures were swarming: 



" Re gar das, Moussu; venoun espeli, et ren per 

 lour douna! Ah! peca'ire! " 



Poor people, what a hard life is yours: honour- 

 able above all, but of all the most uncertain ! You 

 exhaust yourselves with labour, and when you are 

 almost within sight of its reward a few hours of a 

 cold night, which has come upon you suddenly, 

 have destroyed the harvest. To help these afflicted 

 women would, it seemed to me, be a very difficult 

 task. However, I tried, guided by botany, which 

 recommended me to offer, as a substitute for the 

 mulberry, the plants of related families: the elm, 

 the nettle-tree, the nettle, the pellitory. Their 

 budding leaves, chopped small, were offered to the 

 silkworms. Other experiments, much less logical, 

 were tried according to individual inspiration. 

 None of them succeeded.^ One and all, the newly- 

 born larvae starved to death. My fame as a quack 

 must have suffered somewhat from this failure. 

 But was it really my fault? No, it was the silk- 



^ It is exceedingly curious that neither Fabre nor the 

 silk-growers knew what every English schoolboy knows 

 sc well — that silkworms thrive upon lettuce leaves, the 

 ordinary substitute, in England, for the mulberry-leaf. 

 Botany, of course, would not suggest such a substitute. — 

 B. M. 



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