The young in heart and the pure in heart of whatever age will find themselves drawn to this incomparable story-teller, this reverent revealer of the awe-inspiring secrets of nature, this "Homer of the insects." The identity of the "Uncle Paul," who in this book and others of the series plays the story-teller's part, is not hard to guess; and the young people who gather about him to listen to his true stories from wood and field, from brook and hilltop, from distant ocean and adjacent millpond, are, without doubt, the author's own children, in whose companionship he delighted and whose education he conducted with wise solicitude.

In his unselfish eagerness to see the truths of natural science brought within the comprehension and the enjoyment of all, Fabre would have been the first to wish for a wide circulation for his own books in many countries and languages; and thus, through it is now too late to obtain his authorization of these translations, one cannot regard it as a wrong to his memory to do what may lie in one's power to spread the knowledge he has so wisely and wittily, with such insight and ingenuity, imparted to those of his own country and tongue.

Excerpt from the Translator's Preface