INCIDENTS AND REMEDIES 261 



suppose it might have been some httle time. I 

 told the poor weeping women round that all was 

 over, but they would not believe me. 



As I turned reluctantly and sadly away the 

 native medicine-man from a neighbouring hamlet 

 arrived, an old man, wizened, bowed, and worn. 

 They were simple jungle folks, these, and when 

 they besought him with cries, he said, " He is not 

 dead, but sleepeth " : not these words, but very 

 nearly. He uttered charms, he prayed, he stretched 

 himself by the body. The old story of Elijah and 

 the widow's son was being enacted before my eyes. 

 Alas, no miracle resulted, and it was with a very 

 sore heart I left the little sorrowing group in the 

 jungle village. 



I know very little about scorpions. There are 

 two sorts, yellow and black. I have only been 

 stung by one once. Marching across a desolate 

 country near the Tungaboodra, in the Madras 

 Presidency, our tents were so infested with little 

 scorpions that we could not sleep in them. We 

 killed as many as forty striking camp one morning. 



Scorpions always remind me of a friend in the 

 Forest Department who is now an authority on 

 them. He had a discussion as to the merits of the 

 black and yellow varieties. The argument seems to 

 have been one of those which arise less from the 

 clearness of the issue than from the impossibility 

 of agreeing with the individual. Anyhow, X 

 said little, returned, caught a black and a yellow 

 scorpion, and applied first the black and after a 

 suitable interval the yellow to his own finger. 

 Having at last first-hand and reliable evidence 

 he sought his adversary and began, " The black 

 scorpion is the worse." " Of course he is," broke in 



