The Story-Book of Science - Jean-Henri Fabre

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Of the increasing success and widening popularity of the elementary science series written chiefly in the seclusion of Serignan by the gifted French naturalist who was destined to give that obscure hamlet a distinction hardly inferior to the renown enjoyed by Maillane since the days of Mistral, it is unnecessary at this late date to say more than a word in passing. The extraordinary vividness and animation of his style amply justified his early belief in the possibility of making the truths of science more fascinating to young readers, and to all readers, than the fabrications of fiction. As Dr. Legros has said in his biography1 of Fabre, "He was indeed convinced that even in early childhood it was possible for both boys and girls to learn and to love many subjects which had hitherto never been proposed; and in particular that Natural History which to him was a book in which all the world might read, but that university methods had reduced to a tedious and useless study in which the letter 'killed the life.'" 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 "Fabre, Poet of Science." By Dr. C. V. Legros. New York: The Century Co. this book and others of the series plays the storyteller'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 solicitu