300 ARACHNIDA—SCORPIONIDEA CHAP, 
these scorpions plentifully in arid, stony spots exposed to the 
sun. They were always solitary, and if two were found under 
the same stone, one was engaged in eating the other. Their 
sight is so poor that they do not recognise each other without 
absolute contact. 
Fabre established colonies in his garden and study, providing 
them with suitable soil and sheltering stones. They dug holes 
by reducing the earth to powder by means of the three anterior 
pairs of legs—never using their pedipalpi in the operation— 
and sweeping away the débris with the tail. From October to 
March they ate nothing, rejecting all food offered to them, 
though always awake and ready to resent disturbance. In April 
appetite seemed to awaken, though a very trifling amount of food 
seemed to suffice. At that time, too, they began to wander, and 
apparently without any intention of returning, and they continued 
daily to escape from the garden enclosure until the most 
stringent measures were taken to keep them in. Not till they 
were surrounded by glass and the framework of their cages covered 
with varnished paper were their attempts to climb out of their 
prison frustrated. Fabre came to the conclusion that they took 
at least five years to attain their full size. 
His most interesting observations were concerned with their 
mating habits, in connection with which he noted some extra- 
ordinary phenomena. After some very curious antics, in which 
the animals stood face 
‘) to face (Fig. 167) with 
ZS <a . c “ E 
(if y raised tails, which they 
Qe BPP ILD intertwined — evidently 
% with no hostile inten- 
e pepe a BAe SS errata ee in- 
\ Swarms /_(-(-7-  dulged in what Fabre 
a a calls a “promenade a 
deux,” hand in, hand 
so to speak, the male 
seizing the chelae of the female with its own, and walking 
backwards, while the female followed, usually without any 
reluctance. This promenade occupied an hour or more, during 
which the animals turned several times. At length, if in the 
neighbourhood of a suitable stone, the male would dig a hole, 
without for a moment entirely quitting its hold of the female, 
Fra. 168.—The ‘‘ promenade a deux” of Buthus 
occitanus. (After Fabre. ) 
