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number of persons, the result of which went to confirm this 

 popular notion respecting the scorpion. 



The scorpions, at least under certain circumstances, kill 

 and devour their young. Maupertuis, having shut up about 

 one hundred of them, found at the end of a few days, no more 

 than fourteen alive. Another curious instance of this kind 

 occurred about a dozen yesn's ago to the Baron Cuvier. A 

 collection of more than four hundred living scorpions, which 

 he had received from Italy, was reduced, in the course of a 

 very little time, to a few individuals. 



The Scorpio occitanus remains under stones, in the moun- 

 tains of southern countries, exposed to a strong heat. M. 

 Dufour has described this species at full length, and in a very 

 exact manner, and a part of his description is common to all 

 the species of the genus. It is extremely common in the 

 kingdom of Valentia, and Lower Catalonia provinces, in 

 which M. Dufour was unable to discover any individual of 

 the European scorpion. These two species appear to exclude 

 each other reciprocally from the same localities. Thus we 

 should look in vain for the second, or the European scorpion, 

 in the mountains, or arid hills of the environs of Narbonne, 

 on those of schistose nature, or the deserts which form, from 

 north to south, a maritime border of eight or ten leagues in 

 breadth, between Barcelona and St. Philippe, as well as on 

 the confines of Lower Catalonia and Arragon, all localities 

 where the occitanus or reddish scorpion is found, and often 

 in very great abundance. Its country in Spain is the same 

 as that of the carob-tree {ceratonia Siligua, Linn). Thus, 

 for example, a little beyond Barcelona, where we meet the 

 first plantations of this tree, we also begin to find the first 

 individuals of this species of scorpion. This concomitance 

 is entirely referrible to the identity of the temperature and of 

 the soil. The carob-tree, as well as this arachnid, can pros- 

 per only in dry soils, exposed to a tolerably strong heat, and 



