THEVOICEOFTHEDESERT 72 



as far north as southern Canada. On the whole, however, 

 they prefer warm chmates and they have been in the 

 Southwest for a long, long time. Tracks almost precisely 

 like those made by a living species have been found in 

 the Coconino sandstone which was laid down in Permian 

 times or not more than a million or a million and a half 

 years after scorpions took the first drastic step out of the 

 water. 



Most people today underestimate the intelligence and 

 awareness of most creatures other than man because re- 

 cent official science has often encouraged them to do so. 

 But the scorpion is probably even dumber than he looks. 

 At first sight you would have no reason to suppose that 

 his senses were much less keen or his awareness much less 

 dim than those of any common insect. But they are. By 

 comparison even a beetle, to say nothing of a bee, an ant 

 or a fly, is a miracle of alertness and competence. The 

 life which! extinguished when I stepped on my specimen 

 was about as dim as we can imagine life to be. The scor- 

 pion's brain stopped growing not long after he left the 

 water and braininess had not got very far by then. 



Neither his habits nor his character are very engaging 

 even as such things go. The young — miniature replicas of 

 their parents — are born alive and like the young of the 

 woK spider they clamber about on their mother's back 

 until they are old enough to take care of themselves. But 

 maternal solicitude is probably a rather large term to use 

 in connection with the mother's tolerance, and at least 

 until mating time comes around, scorpions do not seem 

 to do anything very interesting. They skulk under bits of 

 wood or stone and they sometimes choose to hide in shoes 



