The fight does not last long. One of the Scorpions receives the full force of the other's poisoned weapon. It is all over: in a few minutes the wounded one succumbs. The victor very calmly proceeds to gnaw the fore-part of the victim's cephalothorax, or, in less crabbed terms, the bit at which we look for a head and find only the entrance to a belly. The mouthfuls are small, but long-drawn-out. For four or five days, almost without a break, the cannibal nibbles at his murdered comrade. To eat the vanquished, that's good warfare, the only sort excusable. What I do not understand, nor shall until we tin the meat on the battle-field for food, is our wars between nations. We now have authentic information: the Scorpion's sting is fatal, promptly fatal, to the Scorpion himself. Let us come to the matter of suicide, such as it has been described to us. When surrounded by a circle of live embers, the animal, so we are told, stabs itself with its sting and finds an end of its torment in voluntary death. This would be very fine on the creature's part if it were true. We shall see. In the centre of a ring of burning charcoal, I place the largest specimen from my menagerie. The bellows increase the glow. At the first smart of the heat, the animal moves backwards within the circle of fire. It collides by inadvertence with the burning barrier. Now follows a disorderly retreat, in every direction, at random, renewing the agonizing contact. At each attempt to escape, the burning is repeated more severely than before. The animal becomes frantic. It darts forward and scorches itself. In a desperate frenzy, it brandishes its weapon, crooks it, straightens it, lays it down flat and raises it again, all with such disorderly haste that I am quite unable to follow its movements accurately. The moment ought to have come for the Scorpion to release himself from his torture with a blow of the stiletto. And indeed, with a sudden spasm, the long-suffering creature becomes motionless, lies at full-length, flat upon the ground. There is not a movement; the inertia is complete. Is the Scorpion dead? It really looks like it. Perhaps he has pinked himself with a thrust of his sting that escaped me in the turmoil of the last efforts. If he has actually stabbed himself, if he has resorted to suicide, then he is dead beyond a doubt: we have just seen how quickly he succumbs to his own venom. In my uncertainty, I pick up the apparently dead body with the tip of my forceps and lay it on a bed of cool sand. An hour later, the alleged corpse returns to life, as lusty as before the ordeal. I repeat the process with a second and third specimen. The results are the same. After the frantic plunges of the desperate victim, we have the same sudden inertia, with the creature sprawling flat as though struck by lightning, and the same return to life on the cool sand.