The idyll of the evening is followed, during the night, by a hideous tragedy. Next morning, we find the Scorpioness under the potsherd of the previous day. The little male is by her side, but slain and more or less devoured. He lacks the head, a claw, a pair of legs. I place the corpse in the open, on the threshold of the home. All day long, the recluse does not touch it. When night returns, she goes out and, meeting the defunct on her passage, carries him off to a distance to give him a decent funeral, that is to finish eating him. This act of cannibalism agrees with what the open-air colony showed me last year. From time to time, I would find, under the stones, a pot-bellied female making a comfortable ritual meal off her companion of the night. I suspected that the male, if he did not break loose in time, once his functions were fulfilled, was devoured, wholly or partly, according to the matron’s appetite. I now have the certain proof before my eyes. Yesterday, I saw the couple enter their home after the usual preliminary, the stroll; and, this morning, under the same tile, at the moment of my visit, the bride is consuming her mate. We are entitled to believe that the poor wretch has attained his ends. Were he still necessary to the brood, he would not yet be eaten. The actual couple have therefore been quick about the business, whereas I see others fail to finish after provocations and contemplations exceeding in duration the time which it takes the hour-hand to go twice round the clock. Circumstances which it is impossible to state with precision—the condition of the atmosphere, perhaps, the electric tension, the temperature, the individual ardour of the couple—to a large extent accelerate or delay the finale of the pairing; and this is what constitutes the serious difficulty for the observer anxious to seize the exact moment whereat the as yet uncertain function of the combs might be revealed. 14 May.—It is certainly not hunger that sets my animals in commotion night after night. The quest of food has nothing to say to their evening rounds. I have served up a varied bill of fare to the busy crowd, a fare chosen from that which they appear to like best. It includes tender morsels in the shape of young Crickets; small Locusts, fleshier and in better condition than the Acridians; Moths minus their wings. In a more advanced season, I add Dragon-flies, a highly-appreciated dish, as is proved by their equivalent, the full-grown Ant-lion, of whom I often find the scraps, the wings, in the Scorpions’ cave. This luxurious game leaves them indifferent; none of them pays attention to it. Amid the hubbub, the Crickets hop, the Moths beat the ground with the stumps of their wings, the Dragon-flies quiver; and the passers-by take no notice. They tread them underfoot, they topple them over, they push them away with a stroke of the tail; in short, they absolutely refuse to look at them. They have other business in hand.