Insect life: Souvenirs of a naturalist

Insect life: Souvenirs of a naturalist

This little volume introduces the work of a great French naturalist to the reader of English. Raumur, another Frenchman, is the greatest naturalist devoting himself to the observation of insects the world has yet seen. His six quarto volumesMmoires pour servir lhistoire des insecteswere published between 1734 and 1742. J.-H. Fabre, who happily is still with us, is second only to Raumur in this part of the great field of Natural History. Though compatriots the two men are remarkably different in the nature of their genius. Raumur, stately and slow, both discursive and diffuse. Fabre,styled by Charles Darwin the immortal Fabre,a most patient, indefatigable observer, ready to sacrifice everything to the carrying on of his work, but making deductions too rapidly from his observations, and taking a philosophical position from which he refuses to budge, even though he stand alone among the naturalists of this generation. Fabres great merit is his graphic portraiture of the living insect as it really is. This proves to be [vi]very different from insect life as it is usually supposed to be by the uninstructed, and as it is only too frequently represented to be in books. In the volume now offered to the reader he is almost entirely concerned with the instinct of Hymenoptera, the highest of the insect world in this respect. His studies of this subject have been continued in several other volumes, and he has also included in the series the results of many years of observation of the habits of other and very different insects. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68186
Author: Fabre, Jean-Henri
Release Date: May 27, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Macmillan and Co., Limited
Publication Date: 1913
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Editor: Merrifield, F
Illustrator: Parker, M. Prendergast
Translator: Roberts, Margaret, 1833-1919