bas relief plaque

 

 

This bronze of Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915), French entomologist and author who popularized insect natural history is a favorite miniature sculpture, by a favorite sculptor, Louis Patriarche. He wrote ten volumes of Souvenirs entomologiques (1879-1907) in which he recorded his perceptive field observations of insect behaviour. Although his career began as a professor of physics, and in 1866 he isolated alizarin (the colouring agent in madder), his life work became the study of insects, about which he wrote in elegant prose. From his study of parasitic wasps he deduced that much of the wasp's behaviour is inherited and not learned. Victor Hugo dubbed him "the insects’ Homer" and Edmond Rostand named him the "Virgil of insects." Darwin cited him as "an incomparable observer."