一九三四年香港詩人鷗外‧鷗在《婦人畫報》上發表了一篇看似無聊的掌篇小說，題為〈研究觸角的三個人〉，以昆蟲行為的科學來解釋男女愛情，和典型的新感覺派小說一樣，語氣詼諧。但是這篇迷你小說的意義，遠非僅只博人一笑而已。雖然小說中沒有提到任何名字或書籍，它影射的是一九二○年代魯迅對法布耳《昆蟲記》的推崇。魯迅不通法文，他閱讀的是日文翻譯本，乃大正期間無政府主義者大杉榮和椎名其二所譯。本文將探討下列議題：為何法布耳的作品會吸引無政府主義者？魯迅在借用法布耳作品來評論中國的國民性時，是否理解科學對無政府主義者的特殊意涵？鷗外‧鷗在揶揄魯迅一類的知識份子時，是否知悉法布耳作品的複雜意義，是否了解當時他和達爾文關於演化論甚囂塵上的辯論？本文探討一九二○、三○年代法布耳《昆蟲記》在歐亞間旅行的脈絡，嘗試理解文本與思潮在旅行過程中，有何變與不變？哪些價值獲得確立？又有哪些被揚棄？

The Hong Kong poet Ogai Kamome (Ouwai Ou) published a seemingly nonsensical palm-of-the-hand story in Furen huabao (The women’s pictorial) in 1934. Titled “Yanjiu chujiao de sangeren” (The three who study antennas), it used the science of insect behavior to interpret man-and-woman love in a playful fashion, typical of Neo-Sensationist stories. But the meaning of the mini-story goes beyond pleasantry. Although no names or books are ever mentioned, it implies Lu Xun’s advocacy of Jean-Henri Fabre’s ten volume work Souvenirs entomologiques: étude sur l’instinct et les moeurs des insects (Memories of insects: study on the instinct and manners of insects; 1879-1907) during the 1920s. Lu Xun, who did not know French, read the Japanese translation, titled Konchūki (Book of insects, 1922-1931), by Osugi Sakae and Shiina Sonoji, two anarchists during the Daishō period. The intriguing questions this paper addresses include: Why were anarchists attracted to Fabre’s work? Did it ever occur to Lu Xun, who used Fabre’s work to comment on the Chinese national character, that science carried special meanings for anarchism? Was Ogai Kamome, intending to ridicule intellectuals like Lu Xun, aware of the complex implications of Fabre’s work, including his famous disputes with Charles Darwin on the theory of evolution? This paper will explore how texts and ideas travel in the Euro-Asian context, and how certain values are lost during the transaction, while others are accrued during the process.