Preface xxxi 



perhaps more numerous, more imperious and 

 more strange, as though nature had here given 

 a freer scope to her last wishes and an easier 

 outlet to her secret thoughts. Fabre shrinks 

 from none of those boundless problems which 

 are persistently put to us by all the inhabitants 

 of that tiny world where mysteries are heaped 

 up in a denser and more bewildering fashion 

 than in any other. He thus meets and faces, 

 turn by turn, the redoubtable questions of 

 instinct and intelligence, of the origin of species, 

 of the harmony or the accidents of the universe, 

 of the life lavished upon the abysses of death, 

 without counting the no less vast, but so to 

 speak more human problems which, among 

 infinite others, are inscribed within the range, 

 if not within the grasp, of our intelligence : 

 parthenogenesis ; the prodigious geometry of 

 the wasps and bees ; the logarithmic spiral of 

 the Snail ; the antennary sense ; the miraculous 

 force which, in absolute isolation, without the 

 possible introduction of anything from the 

 outside, increases the volume of the Minotaurus' 

 egg ten-fold, where it lies, and, during seven to 

 nine months, nourishes with an invisible and 



