Fabre, Poet of Science The Life of the Fly

Abstract

MANY who have enjoyed Fabre's entomological studies will be glad to have an opportunity of knowing the author more intimately, and we have to thank Dr. Legros for a fascinating biography and appreciation, which has been admirably translated by Mr. Bernard Miall. Jean-Henri Fabre was born at Saint-Lëons, in the canton of Vezins, in 1823, some seven years earlier than Mistral. From his childhood he was a lover of nature and poetry, and though he was brought up amid the rudest privations, they did not freeze the genial current of his soul. As a school-teacher at Carpentras, with 281. a year, often in arrears, he continued his own education, and all was grist that came to his mill. He had an enthusiasm for knowledge—about plants, rocks, coins, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and what not. When he attained his majority he had the courage to marry. A period in Corsica, as a teacher of physics, was marked by a revived enthusiasm for mathematics, and by meeting Moquin-Tandon, who initiated him in the discipline of dissection. The next period was at the Lycée of Avignon; and it was there, in 1854, that a volume by Leon Dufour, then the patriarch of entomologists”, decided his vocation. In spite of having to work excessively hard to keep the family table spread, and in spite of every possible discouragement, Fabre produced in a few years a series of studies which made his reputation among entomologists. As early as 1859 Darwin spoke of him as “that inimitable observer.”

Fabre, Poet of Science.

By Dr. C. V. Legros. With a Preface by J. H. Fabre. Translated by Bernard Miall. Pp. 352. (London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin, n.d.) Price 10s. net.

The Life of the Fly.

With which are interspersed some Chapters of Autobiography. By J. Henri Fabre. Translated by A. T. de Mattos. Pp. xi + 508. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.) Price 6s. net.