was, above all, a unique and privileged home for insects; not on account of
its flora, but because of the soil, a kind of limestone mingled with sand
and clay, a soft marl, in which the burrowing hymenoptera could easily
establish their burrows and their nests. Certain of them, indeed, lived
only there, or at least it would have been extremely difficult to find them
elsewhere; such was the famous Cerceris; such again, was the yellow-winged
Sphex, that other wasp which so artistically stabs and paralyses the
cricket, "the brown violinist of the clods."

At Carpentras too the Anthophorae lived in abundance; those wild bees with
whom the vexed and enigmatic history of the Sitaris and the Meloë is bound
up; those little beetles, cousins of the Cantharides, whose complex
metamorphoses and astonishing and peculiar habits have been revealed by
Fabre. This memoir marked the second stage of his scientific career, and
followed, at an interval of two years, the magnificent observations on the
Cerceris.

These two studies, true masterpieces of science, already constituted two
excellent titles to fame, and would by themselves have sufficed to fill a
naturalist's whole lifetime and to make his name illustrious.

>From that time forward he had no peer. The Institute awarded him one of its
Montyon prizes (4/11.), "an honour of which, needless to say, he had never
dreamed." (4/12.) Darwin, in his celebrated work on the "Origin of
Species," which appeared precisely at this moment, speaks of Fabre
somewhere as "the inimitable observer." (4/13.)

Exploring the immediate surroundings of Avignon, he very soon discovered
fresh localities frequented almost exclusively by other insects, whose
habits in their turn absorbed his whole attention.