INTRODUCTION 7 



present time, except among the writers of certain nature 

 books. 



The case of Fabre requires some further comment. Ac- 

 quaintances, who are not entomologists but who read his 

 "Souvenirs" with delight, frequently ask whether I regard 

 him as a reliable chronicler of the habits of insects. I 

 usually reply that, in my opinion, Fabre, Latreille and Reau- 

 mur are the three greatest entomologists, but that we must 

 make due allowance in Fabre's writings for certain precon- 

 ceptions, which, strangely enough, seem actually to heighten 

 the merit and beauty of his work. He was trained as a 

 physicist, chemist and mathematician and when he came to 

 study insects he carried with him the point of view of the 

 student of the inorganic sciences and was therefore inter- 

 ested in establishing clean-cut laws. Owing to this tendency 

 and a belief in the scholastic conception of instinct he natu- 

 rally stressed and schematized the normal course of behav- 

 ior in the insects. Although he noted many variations in 

 their activity, these evidently appeared to him as so many 

 perturbations or accidents which were interesting only in so 

 far as they helped to define his essentially static interpreta- 

 tion. They were, in other words, merely the exceptions 

 that prove the rule. Hence his descriptions and discussions 

 leave an impression of elegance and finality like a demon- 

 stration in mathematics or physics and therefore appeal 

 more strongly to philosophers like Bergson than to the mod- 

 ern biologist who has been so often deceived by clean-cut 

 theories concerning living organisms that he has grown 

 timid and suspicious. Then it must be remembered that 

 Fabre was unable to appreciate the variations of behavior 

 because he was too set in his ways of thinking when the 

 "Origin of Species" appeared to acquire any sympathy with 

 evolutionary theories. If these considerations be borne in 

 mind it is not difficult to estimate the value of Fabre's 



