THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 255 



I expected to come upon excursions similar to those of 

 the Lycosa, whom it is not unusual to meet scouring 

 the heath with her pack of children on her back. The 

 Scorpion knows nothing of these diversions. Once she 

 becomes a mother, for some time she does not leave her 

 home, not even in the evening, at the hour when others 

 sally forth to frolic. Barricaded in her cell, not troubling 

 to eat, she watches over the upbringing of her young. 



As a matter of fact, those frail creatures have a delicate 

 test to undergo : they have, one might say, to be born a 

 second time. They prepare for it by immobility and by 

 an inward labour not unlike that which turns the larva 

 into the perfect insect. In spite of their fairly correct 

 appearance as Scorpions, the young ones have rather 

 indistinct features, which look as though seen through a 

 mist. One is inclined to credit them with a sort of 

 child's smock, which they must throw off in order to 

 become slim and acquire a definite shape. 



Eight days spent without moving, on the mother's back, 

 are necessary to this work. Then there takes place an 

 excoriation which I hesitate to describe by the expression 

 " casting of the skin," so greatly does it differ from the 

 true casting of the skin, undergone later at repeated in- 

 tervals. For the latter, the skin splits over the thorax ; 

 and the animal emerges through this single fissure, leaving 

 a dry cast garment behind it, similar in shape to the 

 Scorpion that has just thrown it off. The empty mould 

 retains the exact outline of the moulded animal. 



But, this time, it is something different. I place a few 

 young ones in course of excoriation on a sheet of glass. 

 They are motionless, sorely tried, it seems, almost spent. 

 The skin bursts, without special lines of cleavage ; it 

 tears at one and the same time in front, behind, at the 



