Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LIFE OF THE
CATERPILLAR

BY
J. HENRI FABRE

TRANSLATED BY

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
FELLOW OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1916

CONTENTS

PAGE
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 5

CHAPTER
I THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: LAYING THE EGGS 9
II THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: THE NEST; THE COMMUNITY 27
III THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: THE PROCESSION 56
IV THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: METEOROLOGY 90
V THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: THE MOTH 111
VI THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: THE STINGING POWER 128
VII THE ARBUTUS CATERPILLAR 150
VIII AN INSECT VIRUS 161
IX THE PSYCHES: THE LAYING 186
X THE PSYCHES: THE CASES 217
XI THE GREAT PEACOCK 246
XII THE BANDED MONK 279
XIII THE SENSE OF SMELL 300
XIV THE CABBAGE-CATERPILLAR 331

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This, the sixth volume of the Collected Edition of Fabre’s Entomological Works in English, is the first that I am preparing for publication since the author’s death, on the 11th of October, 1915, at an exceedingly advanced age. It contains all the essays, fourteen in number, which he wrote on Butterflies and Moths, or their caterpillars.

Three of these, the chapters entitled The Great Peacock, The Banded Monk and The Sense of Smell, are included under the titles of The Great Peacock, The Oak Eggar and A Truffle-hunter: the Bolboceras Gallicus in a volume of miscellaneous extracts from the Souvenirs entomologiques translated by Mr. Bernard Miall and published by the Century Company. The volume in question is named Social Life in the Insect World; and I strongly recommend it to the reader, if only because of the excellent photographs from nature with which it is illustrated.

Chapter III. of the present volume, The Pine Processionary: the Procession, has appeared in the Fortnightly Review; and Chapter XIV., The Cabbage Caterpillar, the last essay but one from the author’s pen, written, I believe, within two or three years of his death, was first printed in the Century Magazine, some time before its publication in the original. It does not form part of the Souvenirs entomologiques. The remaining essays are new in their English guise.

Once more I wish to record my gratitude to Miss Frances Rodwell for the faithful assistance which she has lent me in the preparation of this volume, as in that of all the earlier volumes of the series.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, 1916.