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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 years 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 
