Insect Journal-(Full Color Translation Edition)

Author: Fabre
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: My dear insect friends, once you fail to convince those bold and arrogant people with your inability to perform embarrassing tasks, I will step in and say this: You study insects that have had their bellies cut open, while I study the ones that are still lively; You treat insects as things to be feared or pitied, but I help people to love them; You twist and chop them in the workshop, while I conduct my observations and research under the blue sky, listening to the chirping of cicadas; You force cells and protoplasm into chemical reagents, while I study them at moments when their instincts are most prominent; You are deeply concerned with death, while I carefully observe life. Of course, I must further state my thoughts. The wild boars have trampled the clear spring water, which was originally a magnificent undertaking to study human childhood—the natural history. However, due to the highly developed technique of cell separation, it has instead become something repulsive, hateful, and disheartening. True, I write articles for scholars and philosophers who will one day contribute to solving the puzzle of "instinct." But I also write, and especially for young people, for I truly want them to love this natural history that you so wish to make people hate. This is why I persistently maintain a meticulous attitude and refuse to read your kind of scientific treatises. Frankly speaking, your teachings are like writing in the language of the Indians. However, at this moment, what I am going to do is not these things. What I am going to do now is to talk about my piece of land, which has long been the thing that could my sentiments in all my plans, and I had the intention of turning it into a living insect laboratory. This small piece of land, I finally found it in a quiet little village. It is what the locals call an "almas," meaning a stony wasteland that only grows thyme-like plants. This land is extremely poor, even the cost of plowing cannot be recovered. If it rains occasionally in spring, some grass will grow, and the sheep will come to this place to wander around for a few circles. However, my wasteland, due to the interlayering of a little red soil between the gravel layers, has once been used for planting in the past. Some people say that grapes were once grown here. Now, to plant a few trees, we dig pits in the ground, and it is uncertain where we might dig up the roots of rare shrub plants, which are actually half-combusted due to long-term climatic effects. Only a three-pronged fork can be inserted into this soil type, so I kept stepping the fork into the ground, and each time I dug it up, I was very disappointed. It is said that the earliest planted grapevines have completely disappeared. The thyme, lavender, and some kermes oak shrubs that used to densely grow on this land have also disappeared. Kermes oak is a dwarf tree species, and one can easily step over them with just a slight raise of their legs. These plants, especially the first two, are useful to me because they provide nectar conditions for Hymenoptera insects. I had to return the thyme and lavender dug up by the three-pronged fork, along with the soil and stones, to their original positions. I did not take any action to manage them, as there is a lot of flowing soil here, these soil particles began to arrive with the wind at first,