30 
ON THE REPUTED 
certainly fhe best known in Madras. I have frequently 
noticed that when a scorpion is made very uncomfortable 
in any way, as in a bottle with chloroform vapour, or when 
held in the sun, or under a burning glass, that it lashes about 
•with its tail, and that so violently that the sting might easily 
catch under the edge of a tergite or elsewhere, giving all the 
appearance of an intentionally inflicted sting. Further, and 
this is certainly a very curious fact, a scorpion will die or at 
any rate enter into a perfectly passive insensible state in from 
5 to 15 minutes if kept in the sun, and still more rsCpidly if 
held under a burning glass. 
If a scorpion is placed in an ordinary white pie -dish and 
left in the sun, it will soon rush violently about, lash its tail, 
and then, sometimes quite suddenly, di'aw its legs up and 
become perfectly quiet; if then removed into the shade, it 
will recover in half-an-hour or so, but if left longer in the 
sun it will die. In one experiment I placed a thermometer 
in the pie-dish with the scorpion, and when the latter died 
the thermometer marked only 104° F. I have very little 
doubt that the scorpion observed by Dr. Bidie died from the 
effect of the sun, although it may have stung itself or appeared 
to do so accidentally. I have on one occasion observed 
a scorpion placed in the sun as described above, extrude a 
droplet of poison from its sting without inserting the point 
anywhere. 
To sum up, we may say then, that a scorpion is 
" immune " from its own poison and from that of other 
scorpions, and that scorpion poison is most marked in its 
action upon animals belonging to groups nearly allied to 
the scorpion. 
It would be exceedingly interesting to determine the 
reason of tliis immunity of a snake or scorpion from the 
effects of its own poison. Dr. Nicholson ^ has expressed the 
* Indian Snakes, 2ni edition, p. 148. 
