Excerpt from Insect Lives: As Told by ThemselvesHE present is an age of 'autobiographies' and 'reminiscences.' Celebrated men and women, from time to time, tell the story of words and deeds in which they have taken part. There is something very pleasant in these books, for, as we read them, we seem to have the whole scene brought vividly before us, and with more reality than if they had been taken from the pages of an ordinary biography. We propose to extend these 'reminiscences' to the Insects, and thus make them tell the story of their own lives.The idea of making the lower animals, or even plants, talk so as to be understood, is not new. So far back as b.c. 1209, in the days of Jotham (judges ix. 7 we read of trees being on the look-out for a king to reign over them, and the Bible gives the conversation that took place between the olive tree, the fig tree, the vine, and the bramble.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.