Jean-Henri Fabre

“ The dragon-flies continue their evolutions. Not one is caught: the recent alarm has rendered them circumspect; they fly around the web to pass beyond it. Oh! oh! what is that coming so giddily and striking its head against the network? It is a little bumble-bee, all velvety and black, with a red stomach. It is caught. The epeira runs. But the captive is vigorous and formidable; perhaps it has a sting. The spider mistrusts it. It draws a thread from its spinneret and passes it quickly over the bee. A second silk string, a third, a fourth, soon subdue the captive’s desperate efforts. ”

“ And here it is: a bright thread of light bursts forth, and the tops of the mountains are suddenly illumined. It is the edge of the sun beginning to rise. The earth trembles before the radiant apparition. The shining disc keeps rising: there it is almost whole, now completely so, like a grindstone of red-hot iron. The mist of the morning moderates its glare and allows one to look it in the face; but soon no one could endure its dazzling splendor. In the meantime its rays inundate the plain; a gentle heat succeeds the keen freshness of the night ”

“ In spite of the hungry ones which devour them, the plant-lice seriously alarm mankind. Winged plant-lice have been seen flying in clouds thick enough to obscure the daylight. Their black legions went from one canton to another, alighted on the fruit trees, and ravaged them. Ah! when God wishes to try us, the elements are not always unchained. He sends against us in our pride the paltriest of creatures. The invisible mower, the feeble plant-louse, comes, and man is filled with fear; for the good things of the earth are in great peril. ”

“ The only persons they met in passing through the village were the milkmaid, on her way to town with her butter and milk, and the blacksmith hammering away at the red-hot iron on his anvil, while the glow from the forge illumined the darkness of the road.
The Sun
Sheltered by a clump of juniper-trees, Paul and the three children await the grand spectacle they have come to the top of the hill to see. In the east the sky is getting lighter, the stars turn pale and go out one by one. Flakes of rosy cloud swim in a brilliant streak of light whence gradually there rises a soft illumination. ”

“ It was to turn the fire before the lark. The lighted firebrands, the hearth and chimney, dragged heavily by the enormous machine, all turned around the lark.”
“Well, that beats all!” Jules ejaculated.
“You laugh, children, at this odd idea; and yet, like that eccentric man, you make the firebrands, hearth, the whole house turn around a little bird on the spit. The earth is the little bird; the house is the heavens, with their enormous, innumerable stars.”
“The sun isn’t very big—at most, as large as a grindstone,” said Jules. “The stars are only sparks. But the earth is so large and heavy!” ”

“ Every time he brings his finger near the cylinder, he draws a spark like that received by the exciter. Emboldened by his example, the spectators draw near and evoke the electric explosion. They crowd around the wonderful cylinder that now contains the fire from heaven, called down by man’s genius; each one wishes to call forth the lightning, and each wishes to see sparkle between his fingers the fulminant substance descended from the clouds. So they play with the thunder for half an hour with impunity, when all at once a violent spark reaches de Romas and almost knocks him over. ”

“ In certain places Emile can jump across it; scarcely anywhere is the water over his knees. Well, the brook goes to the sea exactly as the Amazon does; every second it casts its few liters of water into it; that is all it can do. But it does not dare, tiny little stream, to make the voyage alone and go and find the sea, the immense sea, all by itself. It meets company on the way, joins its thread of clear water to stronger streams which become rivers by joining their forces; the sea-going-river receives tributary streams, and the sea, in receiving the river, drinks the tiny brook. ”

“ The sea is the common reservoir of the waters. Rivers, springs, fountains, every little brooklet, all come from and all return to it. The water of a dewdrop, the water that circulates in the sap of plants, the water that forms beads of perspiration on our foreheads, all come from the sea and are on their way back to it. However small the little drop, do not fear that it will lose its way. If the arid sand drinks it up, the sun will know how to draw it out again and send it to rejoin the vapor in the atmosphere and, sooner or later, to reënter the ocean-basin. ”

“ I have told you about the nectar, that sweet liquor that oozes out at the bottom of the corolla to entice the little winged people and make them shake the anthers on the stigma. This nectar is what the bee wants. It is its great feast, the great feast also of the little ones and the queen-mother; it is the prime ingredient of honey. How carry home a liquid so that others may enjoy it? The bee possesses neither pitcher, jar, pot, nor anything of the sort. I am wrong: like the ant that carries the plant-lice’s milk to the workers, it is provided with a natural can, stomach, paunch, or crop. ”

“ The marvels of the clouds are only an appearance, an illusion of light; but under this illusion are concealed the reservoirs of rain, source of the earth’s fecundity. God, by whom the smallest details of creation have been ordered, willed that the most common but also most necessary substances should serve as an ornament to the earth in spite of their really humble aspect; and he clothes them with a prestige dependent on the distance from which we are to contemplate them. The gray vapor of the clouds gives us rain. ”

“ At least, you say the sun rises, pursues its course, sets, and begins its course again the next day. The enormous star moves, the humble earth tranquilly watches its motion.”
“The sun does certainly seem to us,” said Jules, “to rise at one side of the sky and set at the other, to give us light by day. The moon does the same, and the stars too, to give us light at night.” ”

“ If he is opposed he cries, gets angry, makes big eyes, and spitefully throws away his cap. But it is like the boiling over of milk soup: a trifle will calm him. Uncle Paul hopes to be able to bring him round by gentle reprimands, for Jules has a good heart.
Emile, the youngest of the three, is a complete madcap; his age permits it. If any one gets a face smeared with berries, a bump on the forehead, or a thorn in the finger, it is sure to be he. As much as Jules and Claire enjoy a new book, he enjoys a visit to his box of playthings. And what has he not in the way of playthings? ”

“ Above our heads the sky, perfectly clear, presents no unusual appearance; the sun shines there in all its brilliancy. Down there at our feet, almost in the plains, white clouds spread themselves out. The wind sweeps them before it and drives them toward the summit. There they are, rolling and mounting up the side of the mountain. One would think they were immense flocks of cotton pushed up the slope by some invisible hand. Now and then a ray of sunlight penetrates their depths and gives them the brilliancy of gold and fire. ”

“ To restore order, the working-bees that were away during the tumult come and join the bees left in the hive. Two young queens set up their rights. Which of them shall reign? A duel to the death shall decide it. They come out of their cells. Hardly have they caught sight of each other when they join in shock of battle, rear upright, seize with their mandibles each an antenna of the other, and hold themselves head to head, breast to breast. In this position, each would only have to bend the end of its stomach a little to plunge its poisoned sting into its rival’s body. ”

“ The grubs of the June bug alone sometimes multiply so rapidly in the ground that immense tracts are denuded of vegetation, which is gnawed at the roots. The forester’s shrubs, the farmer’s harvests, the gardener’s plants, just when everything seems prosperous, some fine morning, hang withered, smitten to death. The worm has passed that way, and all is lost. Fire could not have committed more frightful ravages. A miserable yellow louse, hardly visible, lives under ground, where it attacks the roots of the grape vine. ”

“ Those poor plant-lice are manna, the regular diet of all sorts of ravagers. Young birds eat them, the hemerobius eats them, lady-birds eat them, gluttons of all kinds eat them; and still there are always plant-lice. Ah! that is where, in the fight between fecundity which repairs and the rough battle of life which destroys, the weak excel by opposing legions and legions to the chances of annihilation. In vain the devourers come from all sides and pounce upon their prey; the devoured survive by sacrificing a million to preserve one. The weaker they are, the more fruitful they are. ”

“ When winter comes, wine, beer, and other beverages turn into blocks of ice in their casks; a glass of water thrown into the air falls back in flakes of snow; the moisture of the breath becomes needles of rime at the opening of the nostrils; the sea itself freezes to a great depth and thus increases the apparent extent of the dry land, which it resembles, having, like it, its fields of snow and mountains of ice. For whole months the sun does not show itself, and there is no difference between day and night, or rather it is one long night, the same at midday as at midnight. ”

“ All at once a sheaf of fire bursts from the crater to the height of 2000 or 3000 meters. The cloud that is floating over the volcano is illumined by the redness of the fire; the sky seems inflamed. Millions of sparks dart out like lightning to the top of the blazing sheaf, describe great arcs, leaving on their way dazzling trails, and fall in a shower of fire on the slopes of the volcano. These sparks, so small from a distance, are incandescent masses of stone, sometimes several meters in dimension, and of a sufficient momentum to crush the most solid buildings in their fall. ”

“ When one plays foolishly with one’s companions, one must at least look where one is going. A dragon-fly is caught in the meshes of the web. With one wing free it struggles to escape. It shakes the web, but the cables hold in spite of the shaking. Threads in communication with the resting-room warn the epeira, by their agitation, of the important things taking place in the net. The spider hastily descends, but it does not get there in time. With a desperate stroke of its wing the dragon-fly frees itself and escapes, tearing a large hole in the web.
“Oh! how well it got out!” cried Jules. ”

“ Think of the dervish’s grain of wheat doubled sixty-four times, so that it becomes a bed of wheat of a finger’s depth over the whole earth. What would it be if it had been multiplied ten times instead of doubled! In like manner, after a few years, the descendants of a first plant-louse, continually multiplied tenfold, would be in straitened circumstances in this world. But there is the great reaper, death, which puts an invincible obstacle to overcrowding, counterbalances life in its overgrowing fecundity, and, in partnership with it, keeps all things in a perpetual youth. ”

“ And remember, furthermore, the prodigious size of the sun. You want it, the giant, the colossus, beside which the earth is only a lump of clay, to circle at an impossible speed in infinite space, in order to give light and heat to our planet; you want thousands and thousands of other suns, quite as large and immensely farther off—in a word, the stars—to accomplish also, with velocities increasing according to the distance, a daily journey around this humble terrestrial globe! ”

“ Now, in order to outlive the other parts of the flower and remain on its stem when all the rest dries up and falls, the ovary, at the moment when blossoming is at its greatest vigor, receives a supplement of strength, I should almost say a new life. The magnificence of the corolla, its sumptuous colorings, its perfumes, serve to celebrate the solemn moment when this new vitality comes to the ovary. ”

“ When he shuts himself up in his room it takes something very serious to divert him from his reading. And so they say that Uncle Paul knows any number of stories. He investigates, he observes for himself. When he walks in his garden he is seen now and then to stop before the hive, around which the bees are humming, or under the elder bush, from which the little flowers fall softly, like flakes of snow; sometimes he stoops to the ground for a better view of a little crawling insect, or a blade of grass just pushing into view. ”

“ The enormous surface of the sea furnishes the air with vapor which turns into clouds; later these clouds dissolve in rain and, chased by the wind, travel like immense watering-pots over the ground, rendering it fertile. In their turn, rain and snow, precipitated by the clouds, give birth to the rivers that carry their waters to the sea. In that way a continual current is effected which, starting from the sea, returns to the sea, after having traveled through the atmosphere in the form of clouds, watered the earth as rain, and crossed continents as rivers. ”

“ I agree, it is not without a certain emotion that one hears for the first time what science tells us of these intimate details of the earth’s structure; one cannot think without fear of those burning abysses that roll their waves of melted minerals a few leagues under our feet. How can a covering, relatively so light, resist the fluctuations of the central liquid mass? This fragile crust, this shell of the globe, will it not some time melt, become disjointed, crumble, or at least move? ”

“ The epeira approaches cautiously, opens its fangs, stings the bee, and immediately moves aside. In the twinkling of an eye it is all over. The poison acts instantly: the bee trembles, its legs stiffen, it is dead. The spider carries it off to its silken chamber to suck it at leisure. When nothing but the skin is left, the spider will throw the remains of the bee far from its domicile, so as not to soil its web with a corpse that might frighten other game. ”

“ Alas! what does man become, materially, in face of such a prodigious colossus! Well, let us raise the giant on our large ball representing the earth; do you know what will be needed to represent it? A tiny little grain of sand which would be lost between your fingers, a grain of sand that would stand out in relief only a millimeter and a third! The gigantic mountain that overwhelmed us with its immensity is nothing when compared with the earth. The highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc, whose height is 4810 meters, would be represented by a grain of sand half as large as the other. ”

“ BY their clever researches, Franklin, de Romas, and many others have revealed to us the nature of lightning; they have taught us, in particular, that when its quantity is small, it leaps to meet one’s finger in bright, crackling sparks, without danger to the experimenter, and that all bodies containing it attract neighboring light substances, just as the kite-string attracted the straws in the experiment made by de Romas, and just as sealing-wax and rubbed paper attract the down of feathers. In short, they taught us that electricity is the cause of thunder. ”