The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre

Sometime during the 1950s I got this book out of the local library. It took me only a little while to almost literally devour it! I had been primed by a natural curiosity about insects, the acquisition of the 1952 Yearbook of Agriculture on Insects and the "Golden Guide to Insects" by Herbert Zim. When I read Fabre's writings excerpted in "The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre" I was hooked. Here was no dry account of very obscure facts, but instead a vibrant exposition of the actual lives of insects! And what subjects for study- pine processionary caterpillars, giant peacock moths, sacred scarabs, solitary wasps, mason bees, grasshoppers, cicadas, spittle bugs and on and on. Fabre had his blind spots (he never figured out how scorpions actually mate, disavowed Darwin and often made mistakes in identification.) However he was a great writer and you have to be totally uninterested not to be captivated by his prose. Soon I was catching, observing and collecting insects. While I had other interests from time to time, these and the related spiders (I became a specialist in the latter) had caught my imagination and my fate was sealed. This is perhaps the best anthology of excerpts from Fabre's works and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn something of the usually unnoticed activities in every yard, garden, woods or desert.

In this book Fabre is not only a taxonomist but a behaviorist and he describes insect behavior in a charming and almost poetic way. This book is in no way dry in the way some find books on science to be and as much as it teaches us about insects and other classes of invertebrates it also teaches us about observation. And though I am vehemently opposed to mixing science with mysticism this book would probably be enjoyed by those seeking self improvement and spirituality as much as it would be enjoyed by the scientist. When I was a child I had an aunt (God bless you Aunt Alberta) who lived on the West coast. She was a Biology teacher. Every once and awhile care packages of books would come from California. One of those books was "The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre". My mother would sometimes read to me from the book when our family when for a drive. I used to hang on every word. In a way that book changed my life as I am now a scientist. I think it can change yours as well. In this loud brash world let Fabre guide you into the gentle world of observation. Highly recommended.

This book tells the secrets of insect behavior. The author observes very closely the lives of the many species he studied. This is nature at her smartest and her blindest; beauty, horror and science. Highly recommended by me.

Exquisitely written, my imagination was immediately captured by Fabre's patient observations and his poetic retelling of each adventure. Once called an "incomparable observer" by Charles Darwin, Fabre's unsurpassed enthusiasm springs to life on every page. Since reading it a few short years ago I have ever since felt inspired to sit longer in the fields and to spend more time just observing. Admittedly, Fabre was self taught and isolated. He stubbornly disagreed with the theory of evolution. Looking back on his work it is easy to see the mistakes he made, blind spots in his approach to the larger aspects of biological research. Still, if you decide to read this book I'm sure you will be inspired to be with insects. What better thing to do?

This was far and away my favorite book of the year when I read it a few years ago. Fabre (1823-1915) was no dry, pedantic writer of insect anatomy and classification, like many 19th and 20th century entomologists. He was a keen observer, insightful scientist, and lively writer. His passionate commentary - just the sort of "subjective" stuff excluded from scientific journals - is what makes the text come alive; for Fabre makes the reader aware that these insects have LIVES, and heightens our awareness of what is going on in the world around us which we so rarely bother to notice. I highly recommend purchasing this or any other book of collected writings by this outstanding man.