The Hunting Wasps

Henri Fabre’s essays on Wasps will fill three volumes in all, of which this is the first. The others will be entitled The Mason-Wasps and More Hunting Wasps. The former will include the chapters on the Common or Social Wasp.

The first seventeen chapters of the present book appeared some years ago, wholly or in part, in a version of vol. i. of the Souvenirs Entomologiques prepared by the author of Mademoiselle Mori for Messrs. Macmillan and Co., by arrangement with whom I am now permitted to retranslate and republish them for the purpose of this collected and definite edition of Fabre’s entomological works. Of the remainder, ‘The Modern Theory of Instinct’ first saw the light in the English Review, and ‘An Unknown Sense,’ in an abbreviated form, in the Daily Mail.

It is a pleasure once more to express my thanks to Miss Frances Rodwell, who, as usual, [vi]has rendered me much valuable assistance, and to Mr. Geoffrey Meade-Waldo, of the Natural History Museum, who has been kind enough to set me right on many an entomological point.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, 1916. [vii]