6o GENERATION OF INSECTS 



shut in a vessel without food for four months, and hence 

 had lost his venomous spite. Furthermore, as the ex- 

 periment was made in the month of November, they 

 recall to my mind, that Tertullian, who was born in 

 Africa himself, in speaking of scorpions said: " Famil- 

 iare periculi tempus ^stas ; Austro et Af rico ssevitia veri- 

 ficat." 



They also beg me to remember the saying of Macro- 

 bius, in the first book of the " Saturnalia," " Scorpius 

 hyeme torpescit, et transacta hac, aculeum rursus erigit 

 vi sua, nullum natura damnum ex hyberno tempore per- 

 pessa." My critics would also remind me of the state- 

 ment of Leo Africanus, who relates that scorpions are so 

 abundant and so annoying in the city of Pescara in 

 Africa, that the inhabitants are obliged to leave during 

 the Summer, returning only in November. This last ob- 

 jection is not only well founded, but it is also true, and 

 proved by experiment, as I shall relate to you now. 



The same scorpion, whose sting had no poisonous ef- 

 fect in November, continued to live throughout the Win- 

 ter, being imprisoned in a glass vessel. In the month 

 of January it had become so dull and drowsy that it 

 looked as if about to die, but in February, though still 

 without food, it began to revive and to take on strength ; 

 as it happened that I was then with the Court at Pisa, I 

 decided on the twenty-third of February to try whether 

 the scorpion had also renewed its poisonous and deadly 

 powers. Monsieur Charles Maurel, a famous French 

 surgeon, happened to come to see me on that morning, 

 and in his presence I made the following experiment. 

 Having plucked the feathers from the breast of a pigeon, 

 I thrust the sting of the angry scorpion into its bare 

 and bleeding flesh. Three times this was repeated ; then 



