The Life of the Spider by Jean Henri Fabre: Known as “the father of etymology,” Fabre was 19th century French scientist and teacher who specialized in the biology of insects. Because he was poor and disconnected from the academy, he could not afford a laboratory and spent most his life studying common insects he found around his house, including caterpillars, wasps, grasshoppers, and flies.
(about the Black Bellied Tarantula, which lives underground) The sturdy huntress is not a drinker of blood; she needs solid food, food that crackles between the jaws. She is like a Dog devouring his bone. Would you care to bring her to the light of day from the depths of her well? Insert a thin straw into the burrow and move it about. Uneasy as to what is happening above, the recluse hastens to climb up and stops, in a threatening attitude, at some distance from the orifice. You see her eight eyes gleaming like diamonds in the dark; you see her powerful poison-fangs yawning, ready to bite. He who is not accustomed to the sight of this horror, rising from under the ground, cannot suppress a shiver. B-r-r-r-r!
(about the Garden Spider, making a nest for her eggs) Now this palace of silk, when all is said, is nothing more than a guard-house. Behind the soft, milky opalescence of the wall glimmers the egg-tabernacle, with its form vaguely suggesting the star of some order of knighthood. It is a large pocket, of a splendid dead-white, isolated on every side by radiating pillars which keep it motionless in the centre of the tapestry. The mother walks gravely to and fro under the arches of her cloisters; she stops first here, then there; she makes a lengthy auscultation of the egg-wallet; she listens to all that happens inside the satin wrapper. To disturb her would be barbarous.
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