Popular Natural History1

Abstract

Popularb (i) HE best popuktrisers, after all, are the masters—if they care to try; and Fabre's “Story Book of Science” is a fine illustration: It is very perfect—full of interesting material, vividly written, stimulating both observation and reflection. He tells of ants, aphides, long-lived plants and animals, procession caterpillars, bees, spiders, shells, cotton, paper, silk, clouds, thunder, rain, the sea, and more besides—all as if it were a pleasure to him to talk, and just the very easiest thing in the world. The book must have been fashioned long ago, but so wisely that there is little that requires changing; it was meant for the children of more than a generation ago, and it would be a joy of a reading-book in schools to-day; it was written in French, and it reads as if it had been composed in English. The translator, Mr. A. T. De Mattos, has done his work with great skill. We confess that we should not call Hemerobius a dragon-fly, and there must be something wrong in speaking of the sharp bones in the silk-moth s cornea, which Fabre described as a rasper for filing at the silk threads of the cocoon. But these are pin-pricks; the book is past praising, and its pages are very pleasant to read—pleasant both to the inner and the outer eye. We should be having a Fabre centenary soon.