THEVOICEOFTHEDESERT 7^ 



count of the kind which hve in Provence and also, more 

 recently, of a Philippine species. Male and female stand 

 face to face with their tails raised and their stings touch- 

 ing. The male takes his partner by the claw and then backs 

 away, leading her with him. This holding of hands in a 

 sort of dance may last for more than an hour, after which 

 the couple disappears under a stone or into some other 

 recess, the male walking backward as he conducts his 

 partner. This sounds almost romantic and it probably does 

 involve a sort of courtship. But the holding of hands is 

 also probably necessary because creatures which are deaf 

 and almost blind can't afford to lose one another once 

 happy accident has brought them together. And though 

 human lovers have been known on occasion to call one 

 another "good enough to eat," we are likely to be shocked 

 when the female scorpion takes this extravagant metaphor 

 literally, as she frequently does. 



Even the scorpion's venom is said to be of some very 

 ancient kind quite different from that of the serpent. And 

 for once a creature commonly regarded as dangerous really 

 is so to some slight extent. The largest kind are relatively 

 innocuous and capable of giving, as' I have been informed 

 by a friend who knows from direct experience, nothing 

 worse than a wasp sting. But two Arizona species, neither 

 more than about two inches long, can be deadly to small 

 children and may give even an adult several painful days 

 in bed. Records kept at the Arizona State College over 

 a period of nineteen years ending in 1948 charge them 

 with causing sixty-four fatalities during that time, or more 

 than four times as many as rattlesnakes can be blamed for. 

 Naturalists get rather tired of insisting that few animals 

 are dangerous at all and very few indeed anything like 



