486 Additional Note on the Natural History of the Scorpion. 



XLVII. — Additional 'Note on the Natural History of the 



Scorpion. 



By the IJon. Richard Hill, of Jamaica, W. I. 



(Communicated by T. Bland.) 



Read 27th May, 18G7. 



Dr. Cargill assures me, the scorpion, on feeling itself incommoded 

 by the presence of anything that either displeases or annoys it, 

 stings itself to death. He has put a drop of chloroform in the 

 glass vessel in which he inclosed the scorpion, and where it fed 

 and thrived, reconciled to its state of captivity, and after the drop 

 of chloroform was introduced, and the scorpion paused to ascertain 

 the inconvenience it was suffering, it then postured itself and 

 deliberately applying the sting to its head destroyed itself. 



Scorpions are impatient of sunshine. When they are so circum- 

 stanced by exposure in a clear bottle, that they cannot place them- 

 selves in a shady place, they endeavour so to set themselves up 

 end-ways, propping themselves up by the legs and the combed 

 antennae, as to expose as little surface as possible to the full sun- 

 light. If this posture — under which they suffer Aveariness — is con- 

 tinued, they drop, and arrange themselves so as to receive their 

 sting in the head and kill themselves. This fact was ascertained 

 by repeated instances of self-destruction under the same irritability 

 in sunshine. 



Dr. Cargill tells me that when a male and female scorpion were 

 inclosed by him together in the same bottle, with some forty young- 

 ones clustering the mother, though they would feed quietly one 

 with the other, when punctually supplied with living cockroaches 

 for their daily prey, yet on occasion of any delay occurring, and 

 they were straitened for food to a feeling of hunger, the two 

 sexes then deliberately caught, up each a young one and feasted 

 upon it. 



