A classic work of entomology, available online in French and English

In 1879, Jean-Henri Fabre wrote a book about insects called Souvenirs entomologiques. Today it's considered a classic of entomology. An English translation, with some absolutely beautiful illustrations like the cicadas pictured above, was published in 1921.

You can read the full book online for free. Yes, both versions. The original French work is available at Gallica. Meanwhile, you can read the full English version at Google Books. Very neat!

Via Alex Wild

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: books • free culture • illustrations • insects • Science

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http://twitter.com/johncoulthart John Coulthart

Great book with beautiful colour illustrations by Edward Julius Detmold. Unfortunately Google’s book scans are disgracefully bad, with colour pictures often reduced to low-res greys or omitted altogether. The Microsoft scan of Fabre’s book at the Internet Archive is a lot better:

http://archive.org/details/fabresbookofinse00fabr
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén
  
  Lovely! I’m disappointed there were not more illustrations.
  
  i suppose those had to be printed in a separate process, cut up and then manually pasted into the main book?
  - http://twitter.com/johncoulthart John Coulthart
    
    Yes, in that book the colour plates are all “tipped in”. Used to be a common process, especially in the more lavish illustrated books.
    
    The Internet Archive also has Detmold’s editions of The Jungle Book and the Fables of Aesop which are well worth a look.
Jim Balhoff

You can read this and many other classic taxonomic works at the Biodiversity Heritage Library: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/16283 and http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/71078

All downloadable with very high-quality scans. Their Flickr feed makes a great screensaver, too.
Snig

When Brood X was out in 2004, my not so beloved former boss was totally wigged out by them. I had a succession of cicadas as my screensaver to make him twitch a little more.
KBert

I was blessed to grow up with a copy of Fabre’s ‘Book of Insects’ in the house. Discovered it about age 10, he became a hero / role model for life.
Patient ongoing observation yields delicate understanding…