Fabre's Life of the Caterpillar

I finished this etext this afternoon. Who would ever have believed that a book about caterpillars could have you on the edge of your seat?

Fabre stops at nothing to learn the private habits of his subjects. What do they like to eat? Will they eat anything else? What if they're really hungry and deprived of their preferred food? How do they mate? Will the males find the female if she's inside the house? How about if she's locked in sealed glass where they can see her but can't smell her? Where do they get their silk from? What is it about caterpillars that irritates your skin if you handle them? Can you find out by concentrating a lot of caterpillars into a mash and wearing the mixture against your arm for a few days?

I wish I had discovered his books a long time ago - this is the kind of thing I craved as a child. I remember loving books about spiders and insects, but none of them really explored their daily habits and how they survived and raised their young, which is what I really wanted to know. Fabre's books are what I really wanted to read, but I didn't know they existed.

Here's one of the detours he sometimes takes; here he discusses man's attempts at controlling garden pests by introducing foes who eat those pests:

"The cherry of our orchards is excellent eating: a maggot contends with us for its possession. In vain do we weigh suns and planets: our supremacy, which fathoms the universe, cannot prevent a wretched worm from levying its toll on the delicious fruit. We make ourselves at home in a cabbage-bed: the sons of the Pieris make themselves at home there too. Preferring broccoli to wild radish, they profit where we have profited; and we have no remedy against their competition save caterpillar-raids and egg-crushing, a thankless, tedious and none too efficacious work.
Every creature has its claims on life. The Cabbage-caterpillar eagerly puts forth his own, so much so that the cultivation of the precious plant would be endangered if others concerned did not take part in its defence. These others are the auxiliaries, our helpers from necessity and not from sympathy. The words friend and foe, auxiliaries and ravagers are here the mere conventions of a language not always adapted to render the exact truth. He is our foe who eats or attacks our crops; our friend is he who feeds upon our foes. Everything is reduced to a frenzied contest of appetites."

Wait, one more quote, this is related to intelligent design.

"But let me tell you: we are called old-fashioned, you and I; with our conception of a world ruled by an Intelligence, we are quite out of the swim. Order, balance, harmony: that is all silly nonsense. The universe is a fortuitous arrangement in the chaos of the possible. What is white might as easily be black, what is round might be angular, what is regular might be shapeless and harmony might just as well be discord. Chance has decided all things.
Yes, we are a pair of prejudiced old fogeys when we linger with a certain fondness over the marvels of perfection. Who troubles about these futilities nowadays? So-called serious science, the science which spells honour, profit and renown, consists in slicing your animal with very costly instruments into tiny circular sections. My housekeeper does as much with a bunch of carrots, with no higher pretention than to concoct a modest dish, which is not an invariable success. In the problem of life are we more successful when we have split a fibre into four and cut a cell into shavings? It hardly seems so. The riddle is as dark as ever. Ah, how much better is your method, my dear master; above all, how much loftier your philosophy, how much more wholesome and invigorating!"