390 Notes on the Natural History of the Scorpion. 



young could be brought forth but under extraordinary effort. 

 Leon Dufour, while conducting his researches into the gestation 

 of scorpions in the summers of 1810 and 1811, meeting with 

 two females of the roussatre species, with abdomens widely dis- 

 tended, opened them and examined them, and found in the 

 midst of eggs very near to maturity, a little scorpion, extra- 

 uterine, and free in the abdominal cavity. It was three lines 

 long by a line and a half broad. All its members were swath- 

 ed together (emmaillottes), so that it could perform no move- 

 ment. The tail was conformable in the number of its knots to 

 that of the mother ; it was turned in along the belly, and the 

 sting was hidden by the feet, the claws being thrown back, and 

 not apart from them (les palpes rejetes en arriere se confondoient 

 avec elles). The two great smooth eyes, very near each other, 

 shone like two big points. The infant scorpion then comes 

 forth prepared for active life, yet it clings for a long month to 

 the mother — sixty certainly, in some instances a hundred, hold- 

 ing on her, dependent for their insect food. "Les scorpions," 

 M. Dufour has said, "se battent entre eux a outrance, et finis- 

 sent par s'entre-devorer." During the moult the parent does 

 not feed. Is it not that during this month of inactivity, the 

 mother not catering for food, hunger leads the progeny to prey 

 one on the other? 



In the scorpion a quantity of fat surrounds the nutrient 

 organs, and forms packings for the abdomen. The fat-mass of 

 insects in the larva state is a reservoir of nutriment. In the 

 long enduring fasts which scorpions can undergo, when circum- 

 stances render them incapable of moving in search of prey, 

 the fat-mass will be consumed by absorption. If the moult 

 co-exists with the period of the young adhering to the parent, 

 the consumption of all that is available internally in the place 

 of external food, would be necessary in the process of lessening 

 the bulk of the animal, within the integument, to be detached 

 and thrown off. Reaumur's account of phenomena in the 

 moult of Crustaceans (Astacus) will illustrate the facts of moults 



