73 ^® ^^^ there before Coronado 



incautiously left in their neighborhood. I have never seen 

 a scorpion outside captivity do anything more interesting 

 than to nibble rather languidly at the body of a moth who 

 had come to my light. 



In fact, watching scorpions closely even in captivity 

 does not provide much excitement most of the time. If 

 two or three are kept together one sometimes absent- 

 mindedly eats a companion but the cannibalism, which is 

 usual, is probably nothing very deliberate. The poor things 

 not only have a very rudimentary brain but also eyesight 

 which is probably just keen enough to distinguish the 

 dark corners where they hide from the bright light they 

 avoid and too dim even to make them aware of move- 

 ment. Probably they do not actually perceive anything 

 they do not touch. 



As one observer has put it, if you see two together then 

 they are either making love or one of them is being eaten. 

 Even anatomically the most interesting thing about scor- 

 pions is their curious way of breathing. Insects have, of 

 course, no lungs. They have merely ramifying tubes open 

 to the outside which permit the penetration of air into 

 the body cavity. But scorpions, being even older than the 

 insect tribe, have what are called book lungs — curious 

 pursehke organs which no insect possesses, though spiders, 

 more nearly related to scorpions than to insects, often have 

 both the insect's tubes or tracheae and the scorpion's book 

 lungs. No doubt book lungs, which are a sort of air- 

 breathing gills, were invented close to the water's edge. 



So far as I know no detailed account of the mating 

 habits of the Arizona species has ever been published, 

 but in a creature which varies so little they are probably 

 the same as those described in Henri Fabre's classic ac- 



