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Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre, Social Life in the Insect World (London: T.F.U., 1911) Translated from the French by Bernard Miall Reissued in paperback by University Press of the Pacific, 2002 Known as the Poet of Science, the Homer of Insects, Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre (1823–1915), a French self-trained entomologist, is known for popularizing insect natural history through lyrical anthropomorphized descriptions of their behavior. His self-published series Souvenirs Entomologiques enjoyed widespread recognition when he was well into his 80s and his passionate observations of the natural world soon gained him the respect of Darwin, Pasteur, Mallarmé, and other notable scientists of the time. But Fabre, a former teacher, was not writing for them - he was writing for young people "to make them love natural history the way scientists make them hate it." Social Life in the Insect World reads like an insect soap opera. Fabre describes the legendary mating habits of the praying mantis wherein the female eats the male after coupling: "In the course of two weeks I have seen the same Mantis treat seven husbands in this fashion. She admitted all to her embraces, and all paid for the nuptial ecstasy with their lives." Trained first as a physicist and later a botanist, Fabre is not un-scientific in his methods, ensuring the reader that his observation of mantis courtship was made in a controlled context with no dearth of food: "there shall not be the excuse of hunger for what is to follow." His reasoning as to why bees eat a liquid secreted by the bodies of their own larvae is compassionate and astute: "For her this liquid is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavor, with which she relieves from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers, some highly spiced condiment, appetizer, or aperient." Fabre's expanse of work accurately describes the life cycles of the cigale, cricket, emperor moth, pea-weevil, locust, wasp, spider, caterpillar, grasshopper, fly, scorpion, and many more; it has inspired several children's books and is considered an important foundation of ethology. Entomological philosopher, psychologist of insects, Fabre's writing proves a rich source of metaphor. MORE: Fabre, His Life, His Work (translated into 13 languages) |
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