TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 



The following essays have been selected 

 from the ten volumes composing the Souvenirs 

 entomologiques. Although a good deal of 

 Henri Fabre's masterpiece has been published 

 in English, none of the articles treating of 

 spiders has been issued before, with the excep- 

 tion of that forming Chapter II of the pres- 

 ent volume, The Banded Epeira, which first 

 appeared in The English Review. The rest 

 are new to England and America. 



The Fabre books already published are 

 Insect Life, translated by the author of Made- 

 moiselle Mori (Macmillan Co., 1901) ; The 

 Life and Love of the Insect, translated by 

 myself (Macmillan Co., 1911); and Social 

 Life in the Insect World, translated by Mr. 

 Bernard Miall (Century Co., 1912). Refer- 

 ences to the above volumes will be found, 

 whenever necessary, in the foot-notes to the 

 present edition. 



For the rest, I have tried not to overburden 

 my version with notes ; and, in view of this, I 

 have, as far as possible, simplified the scieu- 



