76 DISCOVERY CH. 



of a standard work on insects, and thus provided food 

 for the mind at the expense of food for the body. " That 

 which I bestowed on the one I retrenched from the 

 other a balance of accounts to which whoever takes 

 science for a livelihood must needs resign himself." 

 Fabre devoured the book, and the delight he derived 

 from it was a compensation for the parsimony he had 

 to exercise to obtain it. " There I learned," he says, 

 " the name of my black bee, and there I read for the 

 first time details of the habits of insects, and found, 

 with what seemed to my eyes an aureole round them, 

 the venerated names of Reaumur, Huber, Leon Dufour ; 

 and while I turned the pages for the hundredth time, a 

 voice whispered vaguely, ' Thou too shalt be a historian 

 of animals.' ' 



The entomological studies thus started, and further 

 excited by reading a pamphlet by Dufour upon the 

 habits of a wasp-like insect, a species of Cerceris, which 

 feeds its progeny upon certain kinds of beetles, were 

 continued by Fabre with unabated enthusiasm and 

 conspicuous success. With supreme contempt for riches 

 and remarkable indifference to worldly honours, in his 

 lifetime he built up a more solid and durable monument 

 than was ever made by hands. His stories of insects 

 are full of dramatic situations and romantic interest. 



As a naturalist he sacrificed everything to his work 

 and gained a knowledge of insect life unequalled by 

 any other observer ; as a writer he possessed a style 

 that enabled him to disclose convincingly to others the 

 scenes enacted before his eyes and commanded the admir- 

 ation of masters of literature. In an age of haste and 

 money-making, when few will devote time to studies 

 which offer little prospect of direct or indirect reward, 

 Fabre quietly continued his observations of Nature's 



