The Life of the Fly | Page 4

VI MY SCHOOLING VII THE POND VIII THE
CADDIS WORM IX THE GREENBOTTLES X THE GRAY FLESH
FLIES XI THE BUMBLEBEE FLY XII MATHEMATICAL
MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BINOMIAL THEOREM XIII
MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: MY LITTLE TABLE XIV THE
BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING XV THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE
GRUB XVI A PARASITE OF THE MAGGOT XVII
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD XVIII INSECTS AND
MUSHROOMS XIX A MEMORABLE LESSON XX INDUSTRIAL
CHEMISTRY

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
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 has been included as following directly upon The
Pond.
Since publishing The Life of the Spider, I was much struck by a
passage in Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood of
Animals, in which the secretary of the Zoological Society of London
says: 'I have attempted to avoid the use of terms familiar only to
students of zoology and to refrain from anatomical detail, but at the
same time to refrain from the irritating habit assuming that my readers
have no knowledge, no dictionaries and no other books.'
I began to wonder whether I had gone too far in simplifying the
terminology of the Fabre essays and in appending explanatory
footnotes to the inevitable number of outlandish names of insects. But
my doubts vanished when I thought upon Fabre's own words in the first
chapter of this book: 'If I write for men of learning, for philosophers...I
write above all things for the young. I want to make them love the
natural story which you make them hate; and that is why, while
keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I avoid your scientific prose,
which too often, alas, seems borrowed from some Iroquois idiom!'
And I can but apologize if I have been too lavish with my notes to this
chapter in particular, which introduces to us, as in a sort of litany, a
multitude of the insects studied by the author. For the rest, I have
continued my system of references to the earlier Fabre books, whether
translated by myself or others. Of the following essays, The Harmas
has appeared, under another title, in The Daily Mail; The Pond,
Industrial Chemistry and the two

Chapters
on the bluebottle in The English Review; and The Harmas, The Pond
and Industrial Chemistry in the New York Bookman. The others are
new to England and America, unless any of them should be issued in
newspapers or magazines between this date and the publication of the
book.

I wish once more to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for her assistance in
the details of my work and in the verification of the many references;
and my thanks are also due to Mr. Edward Cahen, who has been good
enough to revise the two chemistry chapters for me, and to Mr. W. S.
Graff Baker, who has performed the same kindly task towards the two
chapters entitled Mathematical Memories. -- Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos. Chelsea, 8 July, 1913.
[Recorder's Note: Most Translator's Footnotes have been omitted from
this text, but some of his references to localities and insect names are
included in brackets. I apologize to English readers for changes to
American spelling.]


CHAPTER I
THE HARMAS
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 that take up my time, without tiring rambles that strain my
nerves, I could contrive my plans of attack, lay my ambushes and
watch their effects at every hour of the day. Hoc erat in votis. Yes, this
was my wish, my dream, always cherished, always vanishing into the
mists of the future.
And it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields, when
harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty years
have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues of life;
and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it has cost
me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to