y5 ^^ ^°^ there before Coronado 



SO dangerous as we like to imagine them, and it is almost 

 a relief for them to be able to say: Scorpions really do 

 sting, some species really are deadly to small children, and 

 even adults should beware of them. 



Even so, we tend to exaggerate their dangerousncss both 

 because we always do exaggerate such dangers and also 

 perhaps because in the scorpion we recognize some- 

 thing terrifyingly ancient. Nevertheless, even the so-called 

 deadly sort are deadly only to the very young or the very 

 feeble and I myself have seen a healthy adult who had 

 been stung by one ready to go back to his work after 

 keeping fingers in ice water for an hour. By comparison 

 with the automobile, they have very little effect upon the 

 life expectancy of any inhabitant of the desert country. 

 And though men have doubtless been killing them on 

 sight at least since the earliest stone age, men must have 

 found them impressive also, because Scorpio was put 

 among the zodiacal constellations a very long time ago. 

 And it is appropriate that this constellation, inconspicu- 

 ous in the north, becomes very prominent in the summer 

 sky above the desert. 



So much, then, for this creature which, only a few pages 

 back, I insisted upon endowing with "daring" and with 

 "courage" because it ventured upon the land some three 

 hundred millions of years ago. Judged even by the acute- 

 ness of its senses, much less by its intelligence, it belongs 

 very low indeed in the hierarchy of life. What a long, long 

 way it was from, say, the scorpion's eye — too primitive al- 

 most to deserve the name — to the eye of even so primitive 

 an insect as the praying mantis. Yet the fact remains that 



