vi The Life of the Spider 



J. H. Fabre, as some few people know, is the 

 author of half a score of well-filled volumes in 

 which, under the title of Souvenirs entomolo- 

 giques, he has set down the results of fifty years 

 of observation, study and experiment on the 

 insects that seem to us the best-known and the 

 most familiar : different species of wasps and 

 wild bees, a few gnats, flies, beetles and cater- 

 pillars ; in a word, all those vague, unconscious, 

 rudimentary and almost nameless little lives 

 which surround us on every side and which we 

 contemplate with eyes that are amused, but 

 already thinking of other things, when we open 

 our window to welcome the first hours of spring, 

 or when we go into the gardens or the fields to 

 bask in the blue summer days. 



2 



We take up at random one of these bulky 

 volumes and naturally expect to find first of 

 all the very learned and rather dry lists of names, 

 the very fastidious and exceedingly quaint 

 specifications of those huge, dusty graveyards 

 of which all the entomological treatises that we 

 have read so far seem almost wholly to consist. 



