The Passionate Observer

This slender, elegant volume presents a series of brief natural history essays by French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915), who delighted in observing such things as the mating behavior of scorpions and the hunting techniques of grasshoppers. Linda Davis, who edited The Passionate Observer, selected passages that reflect Fabre's careful, painstaking study of the natural world, which he undertook "to increase by one atom the general mass of knowledge, the incomparable treasure of mankind." (And so he did, for which we must all be thankful.) Bright, warm watercolors by Marlene McLoughlin complement Fabre's work and impart the feel of his native Provence.