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Jean Henri Fabre spent his life watching insects the way other people watch neighbors. In this book he follows mason bees as they build little stone nests, stock them with honey, and care for young they will never meet. He asks how they know so much without being taught, and he tests his ideas with patient experiments. Fabre writes warmly and wonders constantly. You will never walk past a bee the same way.
Jean Henri Fabre spent his later life in Provence watching insects with a patience that became legendary. A schoolteacher for years, he wrote his entomological memories in plain, vivid French that made science read like storytelling. This volume, in Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's 1914 English translation, gathers his essays on the mason bees from those memoirs, with a few beloved pieces on other creatures woven in.
The mason bee builds mud cells on stones and stocks them with honey and pollen for young she will never see. Fabre marks bees, moves nests, swaps cells between species and watches what instinct can and cannot adjust, reporting each experiment like a small detective story. Alongside the bees you will meet the red ants on their slave raids, some reflections on insect psychology and parasitism, and even the story of his cats, told with the same affectionate attention.
Fabre's conclusions about instinct are debated, but his observing is beyond praise. He teaches you to look long and closely at small lives. Gardeners, naturalists and anyone who likes science written by a man who plainly loved his subjects will delight in this book.
Jean Henri Fabre spent decades watching insects in his stony garden in Provence, recording their lives with a poet's patience. The Mason Bees, in Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's English translation of 1914, collects his essays on the Chalicodoma bees that build with mortar, together with studies of his cats and of red ants. It offers close, wondering observation of instinct, homing, and tireless insect craftsmanship.
Jean-Henri Fabre spent decades watching insects in his walled garden in the south of France, and the essays gathered here, in Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's 1914 translation, collect his studies of the mason bees from the Souvenirs entomologiques. The translator's note is precise about the contents: all the essays on the Chalicodomae, or mason bees proper, plus The Story of My Cats and The Red Ants, both included because they bear on the bees' sense of direction.
The eleven essays follow Fabre's method of patient experiment. He describes the bees building their mortar nests, exchanges nests to test memory and instinct, displaces insects to watch them find their way home, and pursues parasites and the theory of parasitism, the tribulations of the mason bee, and the leucopses that prey on it. Reflections upon insect psychology gather what the experiments suggest.
Fabre writes as a naturalist who trusts observation over system, and who argues with Darwinian explanations where his insects seem to him to show otherwise. The charm is in the procedure: simple questions, ingeniously tested, narrated by a man who never hurries a bee.
Edition: Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 1914. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 2884.
The first chapter
This volume contains all the essays on the Chalicodomae, or Mason-bees proper, which so greatly enhance the interest of the early volumes of the "Souvenirs entomologiques." I have also included an essay on the author's Cats and one on Red Ants--the only study of Ants comprised in the "Souvenirs"--both of which bear upon the sense of direction possessed by the Bees. Those treating of the Osmiae, who are also Mason-Bees, although not usually known by that name, will be found in a separate volume, which I have called "Bramble-bees and Others" and in which I have collected all that Fabre has written on such other Wild Bees as the Megachiles, or Leaf-cutters, the Cotton-bees, the Resin-bees and the Halicti.
The essays entitled "The Mason-bees, Experiments" and "Exchanging the Nests" form the last three chapters of "Insect Life", translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori" and published by Messrs. Macmillan, who, with the greatest courtesy and kindness have given me their permission to include a new translation of these chapters in the present volume. They did so without fee or consideration of any kind, merely on my representation that it would be a great pity if this uniform edition of Fabre's Works should be rendered incomplete because certain essays formed part of volumes of extracts previously published in this country. Their generosity is almost unparalleled in my experience; and I wish to thank them publicly for it in the name of the author, of the French publishers and of the English and American publishers, as well as in my own.
Some of the chapters have appeared in England in the "Daily Mail", the "Fortnightly Review" and the "English Review"; some in America in "Good Housekeeping" and the "Youth's Companion"; others now see the light in English for the first time.
I have again to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for the invaluable assistance which she has given me in the work of translation and in the less interesting and more tedious department of research.
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.
Chelsea, 1914.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translation, published 1914. Author died 1925. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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