Jean-Henri Fabre Books


The Life of the Grasshopper

Jean-Henri Fabre

The child is essentially conservative. Custom and traditions become indestructible once they are confided to the archives of his memory. We owe to him the celebrity of the Cicada, whose woes he stamme..

The Life of the Scorpion

Jean-Henri Fabre

On the other hand, I know of another function, which is very easily observed when the Scorpion meanders, belly uppermost, over the wire trellis of my dish-covers. When he is at rest, the two combs are..

The Sacred Beetle, and Others

Jean-Henri Fabre

This is the first of the four volumes containing Fabre’s essays on Beetles, the order of insects to which, if we judge by his output, he devoted the longest study. Of the eighteen chapters that m..

Animal Life in Field and Garden

Jean-Henri Fabre

The other twelve will come some day, my boy; at present you have the right number of teeth for a child of your age. They do not all come at one time, but one after another. We begin with twenty, and n..

The Life of the Caterpillar

Jean-Henri Fabre

November arrives, however, bringing cold weather; the time has come to build the stout winter tabernacle. High up in the pine the tip of a bough is chosen, with suitably close-packed and convergent le..

The Mason-Wasps

Jean-Henri Fabre

For reasons which will be easily apparent to the reader, I have reprinted the chapter called Instinct and Discernment, which was included in Bramble-bees and Others, and that on the Volucella, which, ..

Our Humble Helpers

Jean-Henri Fabre

The pig and the hen, the goose and the turkey, the ox and the ass, the horse and the cow, the sheep and its canine keeper—these and many other old friends of ours in the animal kingdom are made to enl..

The Hunting Wasps

Jean-Henri Fabre

There are for each one of us, according to his turn of mind, certain books that open up horizons hitherto undreamed of and mark an epoch in our mental life. They fling wide the gates of a new world wh..