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...

CONTENTS: The Sacred Beetle The Spanish Copris The Onthophagi A Barren Promise A Dung-Beetle of the Pampas The Geotrupes: The Public Health Minotaurus Typhous The Two-Banded Scolia The Ringed Calicurgus The Old Weevils Leaf-Rollers The Halicti The Languedocian Scorpion

Reaumur (Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), inventor of the Reaumur thermometer and author of "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des insectes." - Translator's Note.) devoted one of his papers to the story of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, whom he calls the Mason-bee. I propose to go on with the story, to complete it and especially to consider it from a point of view wholly neglected by that eminent observer. And, first of all, I am tempted to tell how I made this Bee's acquaintance. It was when I first began to teach, about 1843. I had left the normal school at Vaucluse...

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Reaumur (Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), inventor of the Reaumur thermometer and author of "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des insectes." - Translator's Note.) devoted one of his papers to the story of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, whom he calls the Mason-bee. I propose to go on with the story, to complete it and especially to consider it from a point of view wholly neglected by that eminent observer....

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Jean Henri Fabre, nineteenth-century French entomologist and author of the massive Souvenirs Entomoligies, has inspired perhaps more modern writer/naturalists than any other chronicler of the natural world. Edwin Way Teale's selection of the most compelling of Fabre's writing makes The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre the essential edition of the writer Darwin called -the incomparable observer.-

The Life Of The Caterpillar. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.