PEDTPALPI — SCORPIONS. 325 



and at last, taking; advantage of its elevated position, puts 

 its parent to death. ^ 



According to Pliny, those who carry the plant " tricoc- 

 cum," or, as it is also called, "scorpiuron,"^ about their 

 person are never stung by a Scorpion, and it is said, he con- 

 tinues, that if a circle is traced on the ground around a 

 Scorpion with a sprig of this plant, the animal will never 

 move out of it, and that if a Scorpion is covered with it, or 

 even sprinkled with the water in which it has been steeped, 

 it will die that instant.^ 



Attains assures us, says Pliny, that if a person, the mo- 

 ment he sees a Scorpion, says "Duo,"* the reptile will stop 

 short and forbear to sting.^ 



Concerning Scorpions, Diophanes, contemporary with 

 Ciesar and Cicero, has collected the following several 

 opinions of the more ancient writers : If you take a Scor- 

 pion, he says, and burn it, the others will betake themselves 

 to flight : and if a person carefully rubs his hands with the 

 juice of radish, he may without fear and danger take hold 

 of Scorpions, and of other reptiles: and radishes laid on 

 Scorpions instantly destroy them. You will also cure the 

 bite of a Scorpion, by applying a silver ring to the place. 

 A sufifumigation of sandarach*^ with galbanura, or goat's fat, 

 will drive away Scorpions and every other reptile. If a per- 

 son will also l3oiI a Scorpion in oil, and will rub the place 

 bit by a Scorpion, he will stop the pain.^ Bat Apuleius 

 says, that if a person bit by a Scorpion sits on an ass, turned 

 toward its tail, that the ass suffers the pain, and that it is 

 destroyed.^ Democritus says that a person bit by a Scor- 

 pion, who instantly says to his ass, "A Scorpion has bit 

 me," will suffer no pain, but it passes to the ass.^ The newt 



1 Nat. Hist., xi. 25. 



2 "Scorpion's tail." Dioscorides gives this name to the Ileliosco- 

 pium, or great Heliotropium. 



3 Nat. Hist., xxii. 29. 



4 ''Two." 



5 Nat. Hist., xxviii. 5. 



6 The red arsenic of the Greeks was called by this name. — Mat- 

 thiol, vi. 81. 



"f This prescription is given at the present day in Italy and the 

 Levant. 



^ Zoroaster also mentions this. Vide Owen's Geoponika, ii. 194. 



9 Pliny relates the same story, Nat. Hist., xxviii. 10 (42) ; also 

 Zoroaster, qua supra. 



