Fabre's Writings 



itself, writing down, so to speak, at its dic- 

 tation the data which it deigns to give him 

 as it would give them to any one who pos- 

 sessed the same patience and the same gift 

 for observation. After these first over- 

 tures, he seeks more confidential informa- 

 tion; to obtain this he inverts the parts played 

 by observer and insect; from being passive 

 he becomes active; he provokes and interro- 

 gates, and by different experiments, often of 

 wonderful ingenuity, he enables and even com- 

 pels the insect to confide to him what it would 

 never have divulged in the normal course of 

 its life and occupations. Fabre is the first 

 to think of introducing this kind of artificial 

 observation, which he calls experiment, into 

 the study of the animal " soul." 



To practise it more readily, he needs the 

 insect close within his reach; more than that, 

 he needs it under his hand, at his discretion, 

 so to say. Neither the great museum of the 

 fields nor the place of observation where the 

 insects " roam at will amid the thyme and 

 lavender " quite answers the requirements of 

 this part of his programme. So at various 

 points of the harmas all those appliances 

 which we have already described were set up, 

 " rustic achievements, clumsy combinations 

 of trivial things." In addition to these ap- 



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