The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre

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Title: The Life of the Fly
With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography

Author: J. Henri Fabre

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Posting Date: February 28, 2009 [EBook #3422]
Release Date: September, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF THE FLY ***

Produced by Gerry Rising

THE LIFE OF THE FLY:

With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography

By J. Henri Fabre

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Fellow of the Zoological Society of London

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

I THE HARMAS
II THE ANTHRAX
III ANOTHER PROBER (PERFORATOR)
IV LARVAL DIMORPHISM
V HEREDITY
VI MY SCHOOLING
VII THE POND
VIII THE CADDIS WORM
IX THE GREENBOTTLES
X THE GRAY FLESH FLIES
XI THE BUMBLEBEE FLY
XII MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BINOMIAL THEOREM
XIII MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: MY LITTLE TABLE
XIV THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING
XV THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE GRUB
XVI A PARASITE OF THE MAGGOT
XVII RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
XVIII INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
XIX A MEMORABLE LESSON
XX INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The present volume contains all the essays on flies, or Diptera, from
the Souvenirs entomologiques, to which I have added, in order to make
the dimensions uniform with those of the other volumes of the series,
the purely autobiographical essays comprised in the Souvenirs. These
essays, though they have no bearing upon the life of the fly, are
among the most interesting that Henri Fabre has written and will, I am
persuaded, make a special appeal to the reader. The chapter entitled The
Caddis Worm has been included as following directly upon The Pond.

Since publishing The Life of the Spider, I was much struck by a passage
in Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood of Animals,
in which the secretary of the Zoological Society of London says: 'I have
attempted to avoid the use of terms familiar only to