The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-06-29
By N. P. D.

Il several years ago, more than 30
years old, and his eyes "very tired" as he
said But his vast epic of the insect
world was complete before he died, and is
now nearing completion in the English
edition, translated by Alexander Teixeira
de Mattos. The Mason Wasps is Volume
, TX. Of the ten volumes Of the Souvenirs
emsomologiqaes, and is the second volume
on wasps. There is nothing more fasci-
mating in fiction than these tales of Fahre
telling of the wild orgies of amorousness
and murder and cannibalism that 60 on at
night in the sleeping fields and the dusty
fallows; tales that once read are forever
remembered, and give new and dire sig
nifcance, and add romance too, to each
distinct note in the great outdoor SYM
phony of warm summer night.
Women, it would seem, should espe-
cially enjoy reading Fabre, since in the
insect life he describes the female Of the
species is almost always more deadly than
the male, is generally twice as big as the
male, rocks the cradle, rules the home,
hunts the food for the insect Baby Blunt
ings, and even determines the sex of the
offspring; and, in fact, when the offspring
is once assured, generally has no more use
for the male, and the spider at last serves
the poor bridegroom up at his own we'd
ding feast; whereas the Praying Mantis,
the hypOcritical little cannibal that poses
as a nun-well, her habits are too repre-
be Isible and immoral for wordsi
II.
The passionate desire of humans
throughout the ages to determine sex
(until more recent years when young la
dies embarrass the men by offering for
sale "birth control" reviews on the street
corners) is the marvellous prerogative of
the mason wasps, as well as of some bees,
who make the sex conform to the size of
the cradle. As a general rule, the fe-
males are larger and need more room and
more nourishment Therefore instead of
cruelty looping off her offspring as Pro-
erustes his victims to fit the bed, the
mason wasp lays either a male egg or
female egg as she pleases- males for the
shallow cells and females for the deep
cells.
How does she do it7 That is a ques-
ton Fabre does not presume to answer.
Like the artist who paints what he sees, he
tells what he sees. He reports the results
of his own observations. In his younger
days, when he had great longing for
books, he says, he could not get them;
when he might have had them he no longer
wanted them He did not claim to know
much about modern scientific views. Es-
pecially, and this was long before the
war, he had no use for the German scien-
fists. Quoting a German on this optional
assessment of sex among the bees and the
wasps, he said: Coming from Germany,
this theory cannot but inspire me with
profound distrust" He disagreed, of
course, with his LEARNED friend Erasmus
Darwin" over their opposing theories of
instinct and intelligence in the animal
world, and returns TO the argument In tins
volume, as in its predecessors.
He gives an example of the almost
idiotic instinct of the mason wasp, similar
to that Of the mason bee, or of the eele-
brated maternal instinct of the Lycosa
spider, which lovingly and with seeming
intelligence exposes its little sac of eggs
to the vivifying sun, turning and turning
again, only to do the same with a substi-
tuted pellet of paper. The mason bee is
accustomed to building, victualling, laying
the egg and closing the cell in a regular
order of rotation; so that if finished
home is put in the place of partially
completed home it will go on building just
the same If she is masoning, she keeps
on masoning; if she is storing, she keeps