VIII 



THE INSECT MIND 



THE insect mind is just as obvious as the mind 

 of the four-footed creatures. Darwin thought 

 the most marvelous bit of matter in the universe 

 was the brain of an ant. Fabre's studies have thrown 

 more light upon the workings of the insect brain 

 than those of all other investigators, though George 

 and Elizabeth Peckham, of Wisconsin, have thrown 

 the same flood of light upon the lives of our social 

 and solitary wasps. Their volume upon this subject 

 can go on the same shelf with the works of "the in- 

 sect's Homer," as Maeterlinck called Fabre. 



Fabre is rather the insect's Sherlock Holmes. 

 Not a secret of their lives, seemingly, escapes him; 

 he unravels the most intricate problems of their life- 

 histories; his patience is tireless, his powers of obser- 

 vation unequaled, and his scientific method without 

 a flaw. So many of the secrets of insect lives, espe- 

 cially of the wasps and beetles, are underground, 

 yet Fabre knows them all. He is an eavesdropper, a 

 "Paul Pry," a skilled detective; he knows even the 

 hidden crimes and scandals of the insects. If he does 

 not get the secret he is after this year, or the next, 

 he follows up the clue five, six, or seven years, at 

 times sitting so long by the roadside, or amid the 

 vines and bushes, — often all day, — without chang- 

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