Facts by fragments

To collect these facts by fragments, to subject these fragments to varied tests in order to try their value, to make them into a sheaf of rays lighting up the darkness of the unknown and gradually emerge: all this demands a long space of time, especially as the favourable periods are brief. Years elapse; and then very often the perfect solution has not appeared. There are always gaps in our sheaf of light; and always behind the mysteries which the rays have penetrated stand others, still shrouded in darkness.
Fabre, The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre

J. Henri Fabre spent his entire life in the south of France, studying the insects he loved through painstaking, patient observation.