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The Life of the Caterpillar
Considered "The Homer of Insects," Fabre's work laid the foundation for virtually all subsequent work in the field of entomology. Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) is well known for his popularization of insect natural history, especially in the ten volumes of Souvenirs Entomoligiques. Although a reclusive amateur, with no scientific training, he was an acute observer of insect behavior. He combined his observations (most made in his own backyard) with a humanistic writing style that made his books popular, at least later in his life; during most of his life, the successive volumes of Souvenirs Entomologiques attracted only mild attention. Fabre was 84 when the last volume appeared, and soon afterward he was "discovered." He was elected to numerous scientific societies, provided a government pension, and even the President of France came to visit him.
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Jean-Henri Fabre
705 books56 followersFabre was born in Saint-Léons in Aveyron, France. Fabre was largely an autodidact, owing to the poverty of his family. Nevertheless, he acquired a primary teaching certificate at the young age of 19 and began teaching at the college of Ajaccio, Corsica, called Carpentras. In 1852, he taught at the lycée in Avignon.
Fabre went on to accomplish many scholarly achievements. He was a popular teacher, physicist, chemist and botanist. However, he is probably best known for his findings in the field of entomology, the study of insects, and is considered by many to be the father of modern entomology. Much of his enduring popularity is due to his marvelous teaching ability and his manner of writing about the lives of insects in biographical form, which he preferred to a clinically detached, journalistic mode of recording. In doing so he combined what he called "my passion for scientific truth" with keen observations and an engaging, colloquial style of writing. Fabre noted: Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure.
Over the years he wrote a series of texts on insects and arachnids that are collectively known as the Souvenirs Entomologiques. Fabre's influence is felt in the later works of fellow naturalist Charles Darwin, who called Fabre "an inimitable observer". Fabre, however, rejected Darwin's theory of evolution; on the other hand he was not a Biblical creationist either but assumed a saltationist origin of biodiversity.
In one of Fabre's most famous experiments, he arranged processionary caterpillars to form a continuous loop around the edge of a pot. As each caterpillar instinctively followed the silken trail of the caterpillars in front of it, the group moved around in a circle for seven days.
Jean-Henri Fabre's last home and office, the Harmas de Fabre in Provence stands today as a museum devoted to his life and works.
The site of his birth, at St Léons, near Millau is now the site of Micropolis, a tourist attraction dedicated to popularising entomology and a museum on his life.
Fabre went on to accomplish many scholarly achievements. He was a popular teacher, physicist, chemist and botanist. However, he is probably best known for his findings in the field of entomology, the study of insects, and is considered by many to be the father of modern entomology. Much of his enduring popularity is due to his marvelous teaching ability and his manner of writing about the lives of insects in biographical form, which he preferred to a clinically detached, journalistic mode of recording. In doing so he combined what he called "my passion for scientific truth" with keen observations and an engaging, colloquial style of writing. Fabre noted: Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure.
Over the years he wrote a series of texts on insects and arachnids that are collectively known as the Souvenirs Entomologiques. Fabre's influence is felt in the later works of fellow naturalist Charles Darwin, who called Fabre "an inimitable observer". Fabre, however, rejected Darwin's theory of evolution; on the other hand he was not a Biblical creationist either but assumed a saltationist origin of biodiversity.
In one of Fabre's most famous experiments, he arranged processionary caterpillars to form a continuous loop around the edge of a pot. As each caterpillar instinctively followed the silken trail of the caterpillars in front of it, the group moved around in a circle for seven days.
Jean-Henri Fabre's last home and office, the Harmas de Fabre in Provence stands today as a museum devoted to his life and works.
The site of his birth, at St Léons, near Millau is now the site of Micropolis, a tourist attraction dedicated to popularising entomology and a museum on his life.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 23, 2021
I have read a few of J.H.Fabre's wonderful "Life of..." books now, and I've realized that one of the things which is common to them all is the odd contrast between the personality of what appears to have been a wonderful old eccentric, full of tales of his youth, his son, his neighbors, and especially his objects of study (flies, wasps, caterpillars), all with good humor and a touch of poetry; and the quite alien, remorseless, and sometimes horrifying world of those objects of study. Insects are utterly vicious, more than any psychopath you have ever met or heard of. But the old fellow who tells us about them, he is a hoot. Let's take a listen as he tells us about what happened when he had a Great Peacock Moth, freshly emerged from her cocoon, in a wire-gauze bell jar in his study (a room in which he observes his insects, often open to the outside air).
"At nine o'clock in the evening, just as the household is going to bed, there is a great stir in the room next to mine. Little Paul, half-undressed, is rushing about, jumping and stamping, knocking the chairs over like a mad thing. I hear him call me:
'Come quick!' he screams. 'Come and see these Moths, big as birds! The room is full of them!'
I hurry in. There is enough to justify the child's enthusiastic and hyperbolical exclamations, an invasion as yet unprecedented in our house, a raid of giant Moths. Four are already caught and lodged in a bird-cage. Others, more numerous, are fluttering on the ceiling.
At this sight, the prisoner of the morning is recalled to my mind.
'Put on your things, laddie," I say to my son. 'Leave your cage and come with me. We shall see something interesting.'
We run downstairs to go to my study, which occupies the right wing of the house. In the kitchen I find the servant, who is also bewildered by what is happening and stands flicking her apron at great Moths whom she took at first for Bats.
The Great Peacock, it would seem, has taken possession of pretty well every part of the house. What will it be around my prisoner, the cause of this incursion? Luckily, one of the two windows of the study had been left open. The approach is not blocked.
We enter the room, candle in hand. What we see is unforgettable. With a soft click-flack the great Moths fly around the bell-jar, alight, set off again, come back, fly up to the ceiling and down. They rush at the candle, putting it out with a stroke of their wings; they descend on our shoulders, clinging to our clothes, grazing our faces. The scene suggests a wizard's cave, with its whirl of Bats. Little Paul holds my hand tighter than usual, to keep up his courage."
There are scenes like this in all of his books which I have read so far. There is plenty of science, in this case the beginning of a series of experiments in which he determines that the male moths are finding the female by smell, even though it is nothing he can detect the faintest whiff of, and it cannot be obscured with any other scent. He puts the female in a box with the lid slightly open (not visible), and they find her in droves. He puts her out in the open, under a glass bell jar; they cannot find her. He goes through many permutations of this, trying every way he can to eliminate any possibility of it being sound or vision. When the males manage to find her even though they come from upwind, he does not fail to say so, even though it tells against his hypothesis. Would that modern scientists were as willing to tell us about their false starts, their mistaken first guesses, and so forth.
Even more valuable is that he is willing to put himself, and his entire household, into the picture, instead of describing the experiments in third person passive voice, as if everything that happened were planned and predicted well in advance, and performed by emotionless robots. We see Fabre himself, and all the people around him, as the experiments happen, and it makes it so much more readable as a result. Not incidentally, also so much more accurate about how experiments actually happen.
There is a point in the book where, in order to determine the exact nature of the stinging affect of touching a certain kind of caterpillar, he dissolves their barbs in a solvent, strains out the solid part, and puts some of the liquid (containing, he suspected, the toxin in liquid form) on a cotton patch which he tapes against his skin, to attempt to prove that it is the alleged toxin and not the barbs of the caterpillar's spines themselves that cause the pain and rash. I found myself wondering if it were not simply the solvent itself giving him a rash, but he claims it did not happen with other substances, and five minutes research on the internet suggests that the solvent he used does not normally cause such a problem. Listen to him describe it:
"The second test is more positive and so conclusive in its painful effects that one hardly likes to try it a second time. When the ethereal infusion is reduced by spontaneous evaporation to a few drops, I soak in it a slip of blotting-paper folded in four, so as to form a square measuring something over an inch. Too unsuspecting of my product, I do things on a lavish scale, both as regards the superficial area of my poor epidermis and the quantity of the virus [i.e. poison]. To any one who might wish to renew the investigation I should recommend a less generous dose."
Eventually, notwithstanding his statement of not wishing to try it a second time, after he has done multiple permutations of this experiment, his wife chides him for turning himself into a patchwork of red welts. It must have been a peculiar sort of spouse to live with, but his books are a delight to read.
"At nine o'clock in the evening, just as the household is going to bed, there is a great stir in the room next to mine. Little Paul, half-undressed, is rushing about, jumping and stamping, knocking the chairs over like a mad thing. I hear him call me:
'Come quick!' he screams. 'Come and see these Moths, big as birds! The room is full of them!'
I hurry in. There is enough to justify the child's enthusiastic and hyperbolical exclamations, an invasion as yet unprecedented in our house, a raid of giant Moths. Four are already caught and lodged in a bird-cage. Others, more numerous, are fluttering on the ceiling.
At this sight, the prisoner of the morning is recalled to my mind.
'Put on your things, laddie," I say to my son. 'Leave your cage and come with me. We shall see something interesting.'
We run downstairs to go to my study, which occupies the right wing of the house. In the kitchen I find the servant, who is also bewildered by what is happening and stands flicking her apron at great Moths whom she took at first for Bats.
The Great Peacock, it would seem, has taken possession of pretty well every part of the house. What will it be around my prisoner, the cause of this incursion? Luckily, one of the two windows of the study had been left open. The approach is not blocked.
We enter the room, candle in hand. What we see is unforgettable. With a soft click-flack the great Moths fly around the bell-jar, alight, set off again, come back, fly up to the ceiling and down. They rush at the candle, putting it out with a stroke of their wings; they descend on our shoulders, clinging to our clothes, grazing our faces. The scene suggests a wizard's cave, with its whirl of Bats. Little Paul holds my hand tighter than usual, to keep up his courage."
There are scenes like this in all of his books which I have read so far. There is plenty of science, in this case the beginning of a series of experiments in which he determines that the male moths are finding the female by smell, even though it is nothing he can detect the faintest whiff of, and it cannot be obscured with any other scent. He puts the female in a box with the lid slightly open (not visible), and they find her in droves. He puts her out in the open, under a glass bell jar; they cannot find her. He goes through many permutations of this, trying every way he can to eliminate any possibility of it being sound or vision. When the males manage to find her even though they come from upwind, he does not fail to say so, even though it tells against his hypothesis. Would that modern scientists were as willing to tell us about their false starts, their mistaken first guesses, and so forth.
Even more valuable is that he is willing to put himself, and his entire household, into the picture, instead of describing the experiments in third person passive voice, as if everything that happened were planned and predicted well in advance, and performed by emotionless robots. We see Fabre himself, and all the people around him, as the experiments happen, and it makes it so much more readable as a result. Not incidentally, also so much more accurate about how experiments actually happen.
There is a point in the book where, in order to determine the exact nature of the stinging affect of touching a certain kind of caterpillar, he dissolves their barbs in a solvent, strains out the solid part, and puts some of the liquid (containing, he suspected, the toxin in liquid form) on a cotton patch which he tapes against his skin, to attempt to prove that it is the alleged toxin and not the barbs of the caterpillar's spines themselves that cause the pain and rash. I found myself wondering if it were not simply the solvent itself giving him a rash, but he claims it did not happen with other substances, and five minutes research on the internet suggests that the solvent he used does not normally cause such a problem. Listen to him describe it:
"The second test is more positive and so conclusive in its painful effects that one hardly likes to try it a second time. When the ethereal infusion is reduced by spontaneous evaporation to a few drops, I soak in it a slip of blotting-paper folded in four, so as to form a square measuring something over an inch. Too unsuspecting of my product, I do things on a lavish scale, both as regards the superficial area of my poor epidermis and the quantity of the virus [i.e. poison]. To any one who might wish to renew the investigation I should recommend a less generous dose."
Eventually, notwithstanding his statement of not wishing to try it a second time, after he has done multiple permutations of this experiment, his wife chides him for turning himself into a patchwork of red welts. It must have been a peculiar sort of spouse to live with, but his books are a delight to read.
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December 3, 2022Library-of-Congress OWV F113 E 1925 Memorial Library Cutter Collection
April 6, 2015
Without a doubt my favorite book of all time! Fabre's distinct use of scientific jargon in combination with loftier, more philosophical questions characterize this book as an instant classic, one that I personally would want my children and grandchildren to read before they turn 16 years old. The book itself is a century old, one would not read this for the sake of scientific information, and bits and pieces of Fabre's insight are truly few and far between, but the reverence Fabre has for the Earth and all its creatures is heartwarming; he never ceases to bring a smile to my face! Still, like all nature literature, this book is not without its cold realisms, with death and disease and sometimes as much as violence a-plenty. Such is the nature of the vast Earth we live upon, and as such, need not be ignored.
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