The present volume contains all the essays on flies, or Diptera, from the Souvenirs entomologiques, to which I have added, in order to make the dimensions uniform with those of the other volumes of the series, the purely autobiographical essays comprised in the Souvenirs. These essays, though they have no bearing upon the life of the fly, are among the most interesting that Henri Fabre has written and will, I am persuaded, make a special appeal to the reader. The chapter entitled The Caddis Worm

This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an abandoned, barren, sun scorched bit of land, favored by thistles and by wasps and bees. Here, without fear of being troubled by the passersby, I could consult the Ammophila and the Sphex [two digger or hunting wasps] and engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers have experiment for their language; here, without distant expeditions t

I made the acquaintance of the Anthrax in 1855 at Carpentras, at the time when the life history of the oil beetles was causing me to search the tall slopes beloved of the Anthophora bees [mason bees]. Her curious pupae, so powerfully equipped to force an outlet for the perfect insect incapable of the least effort, those pupae armed with a multiple plowshare at the fore, a trident at the rear and rows of harpoons on the back wherewith to rip open the Osmia bee's cocoon and break through the hard

What can he be called, this creature whose style and title I dare not inscribe at the head of the chapter? His name is Monodontomerus cupreus, SM. Just try it, for fun: Mo-no-don-to-me-rus. What a gorgeous mouthful! What an idea it gives one of some beast of the Apocalypse! We think, when we pronounce the word, of the prehistoric monsters: the mastodon, the mammoth, the ponderous megatherium. Well, we are misled by the scientific label: we have to do with a very paltry insect, smaller than the c

If the reader has paid any attention to the story of the Anthrax, he must have perceived that my narrative is incomplete. The fox in the fable saw how the lion's visitors entered his den, but did not see how they went out. With us, it is the converse: we know the way out of the mason bee's fortress, but we do not know the way in. To leave the cell of which he has eaten the owner, the Anthrax becomes a perforating machine, a living tool from which our own industry might take a hint if it required

Facts which I have set forth elsewhere prove that certain dung beetles' make an exception to the rule of paternal indifference—a general rule in the insect world—and know something of domestic cooperation. The father works with almost the same zeal as the mother in providing for the settlement of the family. Whence do these favored ones derive a gift that borders on morality? One might suggest the cost of installing the youngsters. Once they have to be furnished with a lodging and to be left the

I am back in the village, in my father's house. I am now seven years old; and it is high time that I went to school. Nothing could have turned out better: the master is my godfather. What shall I call the room in which I was to become acquainted with the alphabet? It would be difficult to find the exact word, because the room served for every purpose. It was at once a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room and, at times, a chicken house and a piggery. Palatial schools were not dreamt of in

The pond, the delight of my early childhood, is still a sight whereof my old eyes never tire. What animation in that verdant world! On the warm mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole basks and frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the orange-bellied newt steers his way slowly with the broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are stationed the flotillas of the caddis worms, half protruding from their tubes, which are now a tiny bit of stick and again a turret of little shells

Whom shall I lodge in my glass trough, kept permanently wholesome by the action of the water weeds? I shall keep caddis worms, those expert dressers. Few of the self-clothing insects surpass them in ingenious attire. The ponds in my neighborhood supply me with five or six species, each possessing an art of its own. Today, but one of these shall receive historical honors. I obtain it from the muddy bottomed, stagnant pools crammed with small reeds. As far as one can judge from the habitation mere

I have wished for a few things in my life, none of them capable of interfering with the common weal. I have longed to possess a pond, screened from the indiscretion of the passers by, close to my house, with clumps of rushes and patches of duckweed. Here, in my leisure hours, in the shade of a willow, I should have meditated upon aquatic life, a primitive life, easier than our own, simpler in its affections and its brutalities. I should have watched the unalloyed happiness of the mollusk, the fr

Here the costume changes, not the manner of life. We find the same frequenting of dead bodies, the same capacity for the speedy liquefaction of the fleshy matter. I am speaking of an ash-gray fly, the greenbottle's superior in size, with brown streaks on her back and silver gleams on her abdomen. Note also the blood-red eyes, with the hard look of the knacker in them. The language of science knows her as Sarcophaga, the flesh eater; in the vulgar tongue she is the grey flesh fly, or simply the f

Underneath the wasp's brown paper manor house, the ground is channeled into a sort of drain for the refuse of the nest. Here are shot the dead or weakly larvae which a continual inspection roots out from the cells to make room for fresh occupants; here, at the time of the autumn massacre, are flung the backward grubs; here, lastly, lies a good part of the crowd killed by the first touch of winter. During the rack and ruin of November and December, this sewer becomes crammed with animal matter. S

The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem. I should enjoy working it out in all its details, were I not afraid of wearying the reader's attention. Perhaps I have even gone too far in the little that I have said, in which case I owe him some compensation: 'Would you like me,' I will ask him, 'would you like me to tell you how I acquired sufficient algebra to master the logarithmic systems and how I became a surveyor of Spiders' webs? Would you? It will give us a rest from natural histor

It is time to start our analytical geometry. He can come now, my partner, the mathematician: I think I shall understand what he says. I have already run through my book and noticed that our subject, whose beautiful precision makes work a recreation, bristles with no very serious difficulties. We begin in my room, in front of a blackboard. After a few evenings, prolonged into the peaceful watches of the night, I become aware, to my great surprise, that my teacher, the past master in those hierogl

To purge the earth of death's impurities and cause deceased animal matter to be once more numbered among the treasures of life there are hosts of sausage queens, including, in our part of the world, the bluebottle (Calliphora vomitaria, LIN.) and the checkered flesh fly (Sarcophaga carnaria, LIN.). Every one knows the first, the big, dark-blue fly who, after effecting her designs in the ill-watched meat safe, settles on our window panes and keeps up a solemn buzzing, anxious to be off in the sun

The larvae of the bluebottle hatch within two days in the warm weather. Whether inside my apparatus, in direct contact with the piece of meat, or outside, on the edge of a slit that enables them to enter, they set to work at once. They do not eat, in the strict sense of the word, that is to say, they do not tear their food, do not chew it by means of implements of mastication. Their mouth parts do not lend themselves to this sort of work. These mouth parts are two horny spikes, sliding one upon

The dangers of the exhumation are not the only ones; the Bluebottle must be acquainted with others. Life, when all is said, is a knacker's yard wherein the devourer of today becomes the devoured of tomorrow; and the robber of the dead cannot fail to be robbed of her own life when the time comes. I know that she has one exterminator in the person of the tiny Saprinus beetle, a fisher of fat sausages on the edge of the pools formed by liquescent corpses. Here swarm in common the grubs of the green

Almost as much as insects and birds—the former so dear to the child, who loves to rear his cockchafers and rose beetles on a bed of hawthorn in a box pierced with holes; the latter an irresistible temptation, with their nests and their eggs and their little ones opening tiny yellow beaks—the mushroom early won my heart with its varied shapes and colors. I can still see myself as an innocent small boy sporting my first braces and beginning to know my way through the cabalistic mazes of my reading

It were out of place to recall my long relations with the bolete and the agaric if the insect did not here enter into a question of grave interest. Several mushrooms are edible, some even enjoy a great reputation; others are formidable poisons. Short of botanical studies that are not within everybody's reach, how are we to distinguish the harmless from the venomous? There is a widespread belief which says that any mushroom which insects, or, more frequently, their larvae, their grubs, accept can

I take leave of the mushrooms with regret: there would be so many other questions to solve concerning them! Why do the maggots eat the Satanic bolete and scorn the imperial mushroom? How is it that they find delicious what we find poisonous and why is it that what seems exquisite to our taste is loathsome to theirs? Can there be special compounds in mushrooms, alkaloids, apparently, which vary according to the botanical genus? Would it be possible to isolate them and study their properties fully

Everything happens sooner or later. When, through the low windows overlooking the garden of the school, my eye glanced at the laboratory, where the madder vats were steaming; when, in the sanctuary itself, I was present, by way of a first and last chemistry lesson, at the explosion of the retort of sulfuric acid that nearly disfigured every one of us, I was far indeed from suspecting the part which I was destined to play under that same vaulted roof. Had a prophet foretold that I should one day