30 
The JYaturalists’ Companion. 
ic manner raised his trdl till the sting 
or spur was close to his head, gave him¬ 
self two deliberate prods in the back of 
the neck, and thus miserable perished 
by his own hand.. As I placed the 
body of the suicide in a bottle of spirits, 
I almost regretted that I had not let 
him escape beford he had resorted to 
such an extreme measure. 
My last experience is even more curi¬ 
ous than the preceding, and it shows a 
remarkable provision of nature that is 
almost increditable. All I have ever- 
read on this point is contained in the 
following words : ‘‘The young scorpi¬ 
ons are produced at various intervals, 
and are carried by the parent for sever¬ 
al days upon her back, during which 
time she never leaves her retreat.” I was 
playing a game of billiards in a small 
village in the Blue Mountains; there 
was no ceiling to the room, the roof 
being covered, as is the custom in Jamai¬ 
ca, with cedar wood shingles. My op¬ 
ponent was smoking a large pipe, and 
suddenly, just as I was about to play a 
stroke, what I thought was the contents 
of my friend’s pipe fell on the table close 
to the ball at which I was aiming. In- 
stindlively 1 was on the point of blush¬ 
ing it off with my hand, when, to my 
amasement, I saw it was a moving mass, 
which, on closer inspedtion, turned out 
to be a very large female scorpion, from 
which ran away in every diredtion a 
number of perfedtly formed little scor¬ 
pions about a quarter of an inch in length. 
The mother scorpion lay dying upon 
the billiard cloth, and soon ended her 
feeble struggles, the whole of her back 
eaten out by her own offspring, of which, 
as they could not escape over the raised 
edge of the billiard table, we killed the 
astonishing number of thirty-eight. 
They had not only been carried by their 
parent, but they had lived on her, clean¬ 
ing out her body from the shell of her 
back, so that she looked like an inverted 
cooked crab, from which the edible por¬ 
tions have been removed. She had 
clung to her retreat in the shingled roof 
until near the approach of death, when 
she had fallen and given us ^n's curious 
spectacle. I was told by the attendant 
that the young scorpions always live thus 
at the expense of their mother’s life, and 
that by the time her strength is exhaust¬ 
ed, the horrid offspring are ready to 
shift lor themselves. 
An Amusing Scientific Excursion. 
’Tis thirty years since, and more too. 
Samuel M. Felton was the leader cf 
the party, which comprised, among oth¬ 
ers, C, C. Felton, John Ih Felton, Thos. 
FLill, Arnold Guyot, Louis Agassiz, 
Benjamin Peirce and Alexander Agassiz, 
then a boy, not knowing a word of En¬ 
glish, and armed with a muslin bag on 
the end of a pole, to catch butterflies, 
with which, boy as he was, he was quite 
well acquainted. 
While we waited at South Adtion for 
an express train, Agassiz saw a butterfly, 
and having no net himself, called, 
“Alexe ! vite ! un beau papillon ! ” and 
the game was soon bagged. A moment 
afterward, S. M. Felton kicked over a 
large chip, and saw a huge beetle under 
it. Thinking it might be valuable, he 
called to the boy, “Alexe ! beau papil¬ 
lon ! ” When the lad came up, his mer¬ 
ry laugh at finding a beetle called a fine 
butterfly was infedlious, and none laugh¬ 
ed more heartly than the misnomer. 
From this moment “un beau papillon” 
was the watchword of the party ; and 
every living thing which we thought 
Agassiz could possibly like to take to 
