248 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



For lack of taking this precaution, I very nearly lost 

 a year. Relying on what I had read, I did not look for 

 the family of the Languedocian Scorpion until Septem- 

 ber ; and I obtained it quite unexpectedly in July. This 

 difference between the real and the anticipated date I 

 ascribe to the disparity of the climate : I make my 

 observations in Provence and my informant, L6on 

 Dufour, made his in Spain. Notwithstanding the 

 master's high authority, I ought to have been on my 

 guard. I was not ; and I should have lost the oppor- 

 tunity if, as luck would have it, the Common Black 

 Scorpion had not taught me. Ah, how right was Pasteur 

 not to know the chrysalis ! 



The Common Scorpion, smaller and much less active 

 than the other, was brought up, for purposes of compari- 

 son, in humble glass jars that stood on the table in my 

 study. The modest apparatus did not take up much room 

 and were easy to examine ; and I made a point of visiting 

 them daily. Every morning, before sitting down to 

 blacken a few pages of my diary with prose, I invariably 

 lifted the piece of cardboard which I used to shelter my 

 boarders and enquired into the happenings of the night. 

 These daily visits were not so feasible in the large glass 

 cage, whose numerous dwellings required a general over- 

 throw, if they were to be examined one by one and then 

 methodically replaced in condition as discovered. With 

 my jars of Black Scorpions, the inspection was the 

 matter of a moment. 



It was well for me that I always had this auxiliary 

 establishment before my eyes. On the 22nd of July, at 

 six o'clock in the morning, raising the cardboard screen, 

 I found the mother beneath it, with her little ones grouped 

 on her chine like a sort of white mantlet. I experienced 



