The Life of the Grasshopper

I have ventured in the present volume to gather together, under the somewhat loose and inaccurate title of The Life of the Grasshopper, the essays scattered over the Souvenirs entomologiques that treat of Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts and such insects as the Cicada, or Cigale, the Mantis and the Cuckoo-spit, or, to adopt the author’s happier and more euphonious term, the Foamy Cicadella. They exhaust the number of the orthopterous and homopterous insects discussed by Henri Fabre.

Chapters I. to VIII., XV., XVI. and XIX. have already appeared, in certain cases under different titles and partly in an abbreviated form, in an interesting miscellany extracted from the Souvenirs, translated by Mr. Bernard Miall and published by the Century Company. This volume, Social Life in the Insect World, is illustrated with admirable photographs of insects, taken from life, and deserves a prominent place on the shelves of every lover of Fabre’s works. [viii]

At the moment of writing, the only one of the following essays that has been published before, in my translation, is the first of the three describing the White-faced Decticus, which appeared, in the summer of last year, in the English Review.

Miss Frances Rodwell has again lent me the most valuable assistance in preparing this volume; and I am indebted also to Mr. Osman Edwards and Mr. Stephen McKenna for their graceful rhymed versions of the occasional lyrics that adorn it.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, 1917. [1]