英文全本典藏-昆虫记

经典名著·英文全本·永久珍藏！原汁原味品读英文全本名著！

经典名著，权威选本，无任何删节，完整展现英文原著的无限魅力，是英语学习者、文学爱好者的***、***书目。

既是一部研究昆虫的科学巨著，也是一部讴歌生命的浪漫诗篇，作者法布尔因此被誉为“科学界的诗人”！ 

《昆虫记》是一部概括昆虫的种类、特征、习性和婚习等的昆虫学巨著。1879年，法布尔买下了一座荒石园，这是一块荒芜的地方，却是昆虫钟爱的地方，除了居住外，那儿还有他的书房、工作室。就是在那儿，法布尔一边进行观察和实验，一边整理前半生研究昆虫的观察笔记、实验记录和科学札记，完成了《昆虫记》，书中语言兼具文学性和科学性，洋溢着对生命的尊重与热爱。

法布尔（Jean-Henri Fabre，1823—1915），法国著名科学家、科普作家，他从小生活穷困，做过中学教师，业余自学，花十二年时间，取得双学士和博士学位。他超脱世事，将自己一生的光阴都用在对昆虫世界的观察、研究中，并且专为这些“虫子”写出了《昆虫记》，而这些写“虫子”的书一版再版，先后被翻译成五十多种文字，直到百年之后仍然在阅读界引起一次又一次轰动。

《昆虫记》融作者毕生的研究成果和人生感悟于一炉，以人性观察虫性，将昆虫世界化作供人类获取知识、趣味、美感和思想的美文。

                                                                                        ——中国著名作家  巴金

这个大学者像哲学家一样去思考，像艺术家一样去观察，像诗人一样去感受和表达。

                                                                                         ——法国著名戏剧家  埃德蒙·罗斯丹

法布尔观察之热情耐心、细致入微，令我钦佩，他的书堪称艺术杰作。我几年前就读过他的书，非常喜欢。

                                                                                         ——法国著名作家  罗曼·罗兰

Here the costume changes, not the manner of life. We find the same frequenting of dead bodies, the same capacity for the speedy liquefaction of the fleshy matter. I am speaking of an Ashgrey fly, the Greenbottle’s superior in size, with brown streaks on her back and silver gleams on her abdomen. Note also the bloodred eyes, with the hard look of the knacker in them. The language of science knows her as Sarcophaga, the flesh eater; in the vulgar tongue she is the grey flesh fly, or simply the Flesh fly.
Let not these expressions, however accurate, mislead us into believing for a moment that the Sarcophagae are the bold company of master tainters who haunt our dwellings, more particularly in autumn, and plant their vermin in our illguarded viands. The author of those offences is Calliphora vomitoria, the bluebottle, who is of a stouter build and arrayed in darkest blue. It is she who buzzes against our windowpanes, who craftily besieges the meat safe and who lies in wait in the darkness for an opportunity to outwit our vigilance.
The other, the Grey fly, works jointly with the Greenbottles, who do not venture inside our houses and who work in the sunlight. Less timid, however, than they, should the outdoor yield be small, she will sometimes come indoors to perpetrate her villainies. When her business is done, she makes off as fast as she can, for she does not feel at home with us. At this moment, my study, a very modest extension of my open air establishments, has become something of a charnel house. The Grey fly pays me a visit. If I lay a piece of butcher’s meat on the windowsill, she hastens up, works her will on it and retires. No hiding place escapes her notice among the jars, cups, glasses and receptacles of every kind with which my shelves are crowded.
With a view to certain experiments, I collected a heap of Wasp grubs, asphyxiated in their underground nests. Stealthily she arrives, discovers the fat pile and, hailing as treasure trove this provender whereof her race perhaps has never made use before, entrusts to it an installment of her family. I have left at the bottom of a glass the best part of a hardboiled egg from which I have taken a few bits of white intended for the greenbottle maggots. The Grey fly takes possession of the remains, recks not of their novelty and colonizes them. Everything suits her that falls within the category of albuminous matters: everything, down to dead silkworms; everything, down to a mess of kidneybeans and chickpeas.
Nevertheless, her preference is for the corpse: furred beast and feathered beast, reptile and fish, indifferently. Together with the Greenbottles, she is sedulous in her attendance on my pans. Daily she visits my snakes, takes note of the condition of each of them, savors them with her proboscis, goes away, comes back, takes her time and at last proceeds to business. Still, it is not here, amid the tumult of callers, that I propose to follow her operations. A lump of butcher’s meat laid on the window sill, in front of my writing table, will be less offensive to the eye and will facilitate my observations. Two flies of the genus Sarcophaga frequent my slaughter yard: Sarcophaga carnaria and Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis, whose abdomen ends in a red speck. The first species, which is a little larger than the second, is more numerous and does the best part of the work in the open air shambles of the pans. It is this fly also who, at intervals and nearly always alone, hastens to the bait exposed on the windowsill.
She comes up suddenly, timidly. Soon she calms herself and no longer thinks of fleeing when I draw near, for the dish suits her. She is surprisingly quick about her work. Twice over—buzz! Buzz!—the tip of her abdomen touches the meat; and the thing is done: a group of vermin wriggles out, releases itself and disperses so nimbly that I have no time to take my lens and count then accurately. As seen by the naked eye, there were a dozen of them. What has become of them?
One would think that they had gone into the flesh, at the very spot where they were laid, so quickly have they disappeared. But that dive into a substance of some consistency is impossible to these newborn weaklings. Where are they? I find them more or less everywhere in the creases of the meat; singly and already groping with their mouths. To collect them in order to number them is not practicable, for I do not want to damage them. Let us be satisfied with the estimate made at a rapid glance: there are a dozen or so, brought into the world in one discharge of almost inappreciable length.
Those live grubs, taking the place of the usual eggs, have long been known. Everybody is aware that the Flesh flies bring forth living maggots, instead of laying eggs. They have so much to do and their work is so urgent! To them, the instruments of the transformation of dead matter, a day means a day, a long space of time which it is all important to utilize. The Greenbottle’s eggs, though these are of very rapid development, take twentyfour hours to yield their grubs. The Flesh flies save all this time. From their matrix, laborers flow straightway and set to work the moment they are born. With these ardent pioneers of sanitation, there is no rest attendant upon the hatching, there is not a minute lost.
The gang, it is true, is not a numerous one; but how often can it not be renewed! Read Reaumur’s description of the wonderful procreating machinery boasted by the Flesh flies. It is a spiral ribbon, a velvety scroll whose nap is a sort of fleece of maggots set closely together and each cased in a sheath. The patient biographer counted the host: it numbers, he tells us, nearly twenty thousand. You are seized with stupefaction at this anatomical fact.
How does the Grey fly find the time to settle a family of such dimensions, especially in small packets, as she has just done on my window sill? What a number of dead dogs, moles and snakes must she not visit before exhausting her womb! Will she find them? Corpses of much size do not abound to that extent in the country. As everything suits her, she will alight on other remains of minor importance. Should the prize be a rich one, she will return to it tomorrow, the day after and later still, over and over again. In the course of the season, by dint of packets of grubs deposited here, there and everywhere, she will perhaps end by housing her entire brood. But then, if all things prosper, what a glut, for there are several families born during the year! We feel it instinctively: there must be a check to these generative enormities.
Let us first consider the grub. It is a sturdy maggot, easy to distinguish from the Greenbottle’s by its larger girth and especially by the way in which its body terminates behind. There is here a sudden breaking off, hollowed into a deep cup. At the bottom of this crater are two breathing holes, two stigmata with amberred tips. The edge of the cavity is fringed with half a score of pointed, fleshy festoons, which diverge like the spikes of a coronet. The creature can close or open this diadem at will by bringing the denticulations together or by spreading them out wide. This protects the air holes which might otherwise be choked up when the maggot disappears in the sea of broth. Asphyxia would supervene, if the two breathing holes at the back became obstructed. During the immersion, the festooned coronet shuts like a flower closing its petals and the liquid is not admitted to the cavity.
Next follows the emergence. The hind part reappears in the air, but appears alone, just at the level of the fluid. Then the coronet spreads out afresh, the cup gapes and assumes the aspect of a tiny flower, with the white denticulations for petals and the two bright red dots, the stigmata at the bottom, for stamens. When the grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel yard. It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones. The maggot has its beauties after all.