Synopses & Reviews
Great French entomologist's charming essays on insect life combine scientific rigor with the style of a literary classic. Beautifully written passages reveal the intricate, fascinating worlds of the beetle, cicada, praying mantis, glow-worm, wasp, grub, cricket, locust, and other creatures as they hunt, build nests, feed families, and more. Rare volume will delight any naturalist.
Synopsis
Hailed by Darwin as "The Homer of Insects," famed French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre (1823 1915) devoted hours of rapt attention to insects while they hunted, built nests, and fed their families. Working in Provence, in barren, sun-scorched fields inhabited by countless wasps and bees, he observed their intricate and fascinating world, recounting their activities in simple, beautifully written essays.
This volume, based on translations of Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques, blends folklore and mythology with factual explanation. Fabre's absorbing account of the scarab beetle's existence, for example, begins with the ancient Egyptians' symbolic view of this busy creature, eventually leading to a careful discussion of its characteristic method of rolling a carefully sculpted ball of food to its den. Elsewhere, he discusses with infectious enthusiasm the physiologic secrets behind the luminosity of fireflies, the musical talents of the locust, the comfortable home of the field cricket, and the cannibalism of the pious-looking praying mantis, among other topics.
These charmingly related stories of insect life are a rare combination of scientific study and literary classic that will delight entomologists, naturalists, and nature lovers alike."
Synopsis
Beautiful, simply written observations about the beetle, cicada, praying mantis, glow-worm, wasp, grub, cricket, locust and other creatures, describing how they hunt, build nests, feed families, and more.
Table of Contents
Publisher's Note
I My Work and My Workshop
II The Sacred Beetle
III The Cicada
IV The Praying Mantis
V The Glow-Worm
VI A Mason-Wasp
VII The Psyches
VIII The Self-Denial of the Spanish Copris
IX Two Strange Grasshoppers
X Common Wasps
XI The Adventures of a Grub
XII The Cricket
XIII The Sisyphus
XIV The Capricorn
XV Locusts
XVI The Anthrax Fly