SCORPIONS 55 



many litters, and that I had always chanced upon the 

 last. 



I would not like to have you believe, Signor Carlo, that 

 there is such a scarcity of scorpions in our Italy as Pliny 

 says obtained in his time, writing in book eleven of his 

 Natural History : " Ssepe Psylli, qui reliquarum venena 

 terrarum invehentes, qusestus sui causa peregrinis malis 

 implevere Italiam, hos quoque importare conati sunt. 

 Sed vivere intra Siculi coeli regionem non potuere. Vi- 

 suntur tamen aliquando in Italia, sed innocui ;" — for 

 even to-day in the city of Florence alone, nearly four 

 hundred pounds are consumed in the making of oil as an 

 antidote to poison. I believe, however, that Pliny was 

 right in affirming that the Italian scorpions are not poi- 

 sonous, as I have often seen the peasants carry them 

 about for sale in Florence, and handle them freely, thrust- 

 ing their bare hands into the sacks and, though frequently 

 stung, show no signs of poison. And yet all the Tuscan 

 scorpions are of the kind that have six joints, or vertebrae, 

 in the tail, which Avicenna considered more poisonous 

 than others. 



I do not wish to neglect telling you that, as the Italian 

 scorpions which I have examined, have only six joints 

 in the tail, the same is so with the scorpions of Egypt, 

 as I noticed in the case of those which were sent in the 

 year 1657 to my Lord, the Grand Duke. There is, how- 

 ever, no little difference between ours and the foreign 

 ones : though both are of the same blackish color, the 

 Egyptian scorpions are much larger and fuller than the 

 others. Having placed in the scales an Egyptian scor- 

 pion, cleansed of its entrails, I found that it weighed 

 twenty grains, while one from Italy on being weighed, 



