opportunity of expressing my profound gratitude.

Let me at the same time thank all those who have associated themselves with
my efforts by supplying me with letters in their possession and furnishing
me with personal information; and in particular Mme Henry Devillario, M.
Achard, and M. J. Belleudy, ex-prefect of Vaucluse; not forgetting M. Louis
Charrasse, teacher at Beaumont-d'Orange, and M. Vayssières, professor of
the Faculty of Sciences at Marseilles, all of whom I have to thank for
personal and intimate information.

I must also express my gratitude to M. Henri Bergson, Professor Bouvier,
and the learned M. Paul Marchal for the advice and the valuable suggestions
which they offered me during the preparation of this book.

I shall feel fully repaid for my pains if this "Life" of one of the
greatest of the world's naturalists, by enabling men to know him better,
also leads them to love him the more.


FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE.


CHAPTER 1. THE INTUITION OF NATURE.

Each thing created, says Emerson, has its painter or its poet. Like the
enchanted princess of the fairy-tales, it awaits its predestined liberator.

Every part of nature has its mystery and its beauty, its logic and its
explanation; and the epigraph given me by Fabre himself, which appears on
the title-page of this volume, is in no way deceptive. The tiny insects