Fabre, Poet of ScienceCentury Company, 1913 - 352 pages |
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10th series Abbey of Saint-Martial able admirable Ajaccio amid animal Anthrax astonishing Avignon beautiful beetle better blind brother cabbage caterpillar Carpentras cell Cerceris chap charming Charrasse cicada Cigale cocoon creatures curious delight devour divine Duruy earth eggs emerge eternal evolution eyes Fabre never Fabre's facts Favier feel finally flowers genius grub hand Harmas heart Hymenoptera ideas ingenious insect instinct laboratory labour larva larvæ least leaves less light living Marius marvellous master memory mind Mistral Mont Ventoux naturalist nature nest nourishment nursling observations Osmia palæstra paralysed passion Philanthus poet precisely prey Processional caterpillar profound Provence Réaumur revealed Scarabæus scientist secret Sérignan silent simple Sitaris skin soil Souvenirs entomologiques species Sphex spider suddenly task terrible Thebaïd thickets things tiny tion trepans truth uncon vast Vaucluse Ventoux victim wasp watch whole young
Fréquemment cités
Page 225 - ... the murderous fore-limbs open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with eyes vaguely resembling those of the peacock's tail, part of the panoply of war, concealed upon ordinary occasions.
Page 107 - Above the orbits, two short, bristling eyebrows seem set there to guide the vision ; one, by dint of knitting itself above the magnifying-glass, has retained an indelible fold of continual attention; the other, on the contrary, always updrawn, has the look of defying the 'interlocutor, of foreseeing his objections, of waiting with an ever-ready return -thrust. Such is this striking physiognomy, which one who has seen it cannot forget. There, in this
Page 173 - He always preferred to confine himself to the reality, and for the rest to reply simply, "We do not know.
Page 32 - ... one of those best fitted for a noble spirit, and a lover of the good. "3 Listen to the lesson which he gives his brother : " To-day is Thursday ; nothing calls you out of doors ; you choose a thoroughly quiet retreat, where the light is not too strong. There you are, elbows on table, your thumbs to your ears, and a book in front of you. The intelligence awakes ; the will holds the reins of it ; the outer world disappears, the ear no longer hears, the eye no longer sees, the body no longer exists...
Page 7 - I am done with wide horizons and "far -reaching thoughts." And yet on reading now the old letters which he has exhumed from a mass of old yellow papers, and which he has presented and coordinated with so pious a care, it seems to me that in the depths of my being I can still feel rising in me all the fever of my early years, all the enthusiasm of long ago...
Page 223 - It is a sight never to be forgotten. The mandibles of the beetles are at work in all directions ; the procession is attacked in the van, in the rear, in the centre ; the victims are wounded on the back or the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds ; their contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree ; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their...
Page 203 - Do not both obey, not the gloomy law of carnage, but a kind of sovereign and exquisite sacrifice, some sort of unconscious idea of submission to a superior and collective interest.
Page 245 - The outer world scarcely tempts me at all ; surrounded by my little family, it is enough for me to go into the woods from time to time, to listen to the fluting of the blackbirds. The very idea of the town disgusts me. Henceforth it would be impossible for me to live in the little cage of a citizen, Here I am, run wild, and I shall be so till the end.
Page 52 - ... the wastes of brushwood which the ploughshare has never turned, which cover the mountains from base to summit; the fishing-boats that plough the gulf: all this forms a prospect so magnificent, so striking, that whosoever has beheld it must always long to see it again." His ability as a writer he owed to geometry, whose severe discipline forms and exercises the mind, gives it the salutary habit of precision and lucidity, and puts it on its guard against terms that are incorrect or unduly vague....
Page 60 - Fabre, his curiosity and interest aroused, wished to observe the facts for himself ; and, to his great surprise, he discovered how incomplete and insufficiently verified were the observations of the man who was at that time known as " the patriarch of entomologists.
Références à ce livre
Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Naturalists Donald Culross Peattie Affichage d'extraits - 1936 |