Nor shall I find it in my father. The excellent man, who was hard-working and sturdily-built like grandad, had been to school as a child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred in the stories in the almanack. He was the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted by the town, and he lived to regret it. Badly off, having but little outlet for his industry, making God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood, [103] he went through all the disappointments of the countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by the burden for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from starting me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and more serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he was right. The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back. Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, ploughmen, sowers of rye, neat-herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters of observation. [104] Between the parents and the son, what a difference, what a change of life and of destiny! Quantum mutatus ab illis! This, no doubt, is the first thing to strike one; and here, too, we have one of the most salient features of the superiority of the human intelligence; this almost infinite possibility of transformation and progress, which forms such a striking contrast with the rigid immutability of instinct which is barely susceptible of the slightest variation. But for all this Fabre still bears the stamp of the soil and of his ancestry, and I am certain that the pagès of the banks of the Viaur, were they to descend to the banks of the Aygues to visit the hermit of Sérignan, would recognise by more than one characteristic the child of their native soil and their own race. Under his wide felt hat, “in his linen jacket” [105] and his heavy shoes, with a face like theirs in its simplicity and good nature, he would see almost one of themselves. And if, after entering his home, they were to follow him into the enclosure, among his crops and his appliances, if they were to see him valiantly digging up the soil of the harmas in search of fresh burrows of the Scarabæi, or assembling a few thick planks to contrive some new entomological apparatus, or simply beating the brushwood over his inverted umbrella in search of insects, they would certainly be tempted to join in and lend him a hand as though dealing with a fellow-labourer.