death, retained intact for an incredible time their sumptuous costume,
gleaming with gold, copper, and emerald, while the tissues remained
perfectly fresh. In a word, the victims of Cerceris, far from being
desiccated or putrefied, were found in a state of integrity which was
altogether paradoxical.

Dufour merely believed that the Buprestes were dead, and he gave an
attempted explanation of the phenomenon.

Fabre, his curiosity and interest aroused, wished to observe the facts for
himself; and, to his great surprise, he discovered how incomplete and
insufficiently verified were the observations of the man who was at that
time known as "the patriarch of entomologists."

>From that moment he saw his way ahead; he suspected that there was still
much to discover and much to revise in this vast department of nature, and
conceived the idea of resuming the work so splendidly outlined by Réaumur
and the two Hubers, but almost completely neglected since the days of those
illustrious masters. He divined that here were fresh pastures, a vast
unexplored country to be opened up, an entire unimagined science to be
founded, wonderful secrets to be discovered, magnificent problems to be
solved, and he dreamed of consecrating himself unreservedly, of employing
his whole life in the pursuit of this object; that long life whose fruitful
activity was to extend over nearly ninety years, and which was to be so
"representative" by the dignity of the man, the probity of the expert, the
genius of the observer, and the originality of the writer.

The year 1855 saw the first appearance, in the "Annales des sciences
naturelles," of the famous memoir which marked the beginning of his fame:
the history, which might well be called marvellous and incredible, of the