the workroom of master naturalist henri fabre, southern france

One of the foremost naturalists in Victorian times was the French entomologist Fabre. As far as he was concerned, although it was important to make collections of insects it was also important to know how and why they behaved as they did. He was one of the first entomologists to go out into the field and study how insects lead their lives in nature. Not only that, he could write about his discoveries simply and beautifully so that even people who did understand anything about entomology could appreciate them. When I was ten years old, my brother Lawrence introduced me to Fabre’s writings. They opened up a magical world. Here was a man who could tell me why dung beetles so busily made little balls from horse or cow manure and buried them and how the glow-worm overpowers and consumes snails; who could tell me what a praying mantis did on her wedding night and who could describe exciting experiments to prove his theories — he once borrowed a cannon and fired it off in front of his house (breaking all the windows) to see if cicadas could hear. Though his main work was with insects, Fabre was interested in the whole of nature from mushrooms to fossils and his writings meant that you were suddenly transported out into the open air instead of, as with so many Victorian naturalists, into a museum.

— Gerald Durrell, The Amateur Naturalist