Category Archives: Entomology

Fabre at home.

I was only about 12 years old when I first heard about Jean-Henri Fabre, while reading about Gerald Durrell‘s childhood in the book Birds, Beasts and Relatives. Gerald’s brother Lawrence, recognising his interest in bugs, gave him a copy of  The Sacred Beetle and Others…

by E. J. Detmold: Fabre’s Book of Insects.

Forgetting my food, I tore the parcel open, and there inside was a squat, green book entitled The Sacred Beetle and Others by Jean Henri Fabre. Opening it, I was transported by delight, for the frontispiece was a picture of two dung-beetles, and they looked so familiar they might well have been close cousins of my own dung-beetles. They were rolling a beautiful ball of dung between them. Enraptured, savouring every moment, I turned the pages slowly. The text was charming. No erudite or confusing tome, this. It was written in such a simple and straightforward way that even I could understand it. ‘Leave the book till later, dear. Eat your lunch before it gets cold,’ said Mother. Reluctantly I put the book on my lap and then attacked my food with such speed and ferocity that I had acute indigestion for the rest of the afternoon. This in no way detracted from the charm of delving into Fabre for the first time. While the family had their siesta, I lay in the garden in the shade of the tangerine trees and devoured the book, page by page, until by tea-time – to my disappointment – I had reached the end. But nothing could describe my elation. I was now armed with knowledge. I knew, I felt, everything there was to know about dung-beetles. Now they were not merely mysterious insects crawling ponderously throughout the olive groves – they were my intimate friends.

At that time, in South Africa in the early 1970′s, I had no access to Fabre’s books.  They had no copies in the library (my second home for most of my youth), and the internet and ebooks were not even a twinkle in someone’s eye.

Thoughts of reading Fabre faded…

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