The Common Scorpion, smaller and much less active than the other, was brought up, for purposes of comparison, in humble glass jars that stood on the table in my study. The modest apparatus did not take up much room and were easy to examine; and I made a point of visiting them daily. Every morning, before sitting down to blacken a few pages of my diary with prose, I invariably lifted the piece of cardboard which I used to shelter my boarders and enquired into the happenings of the night. These daily visits were not so feasible in the large glass cage, whose numerous dwellings required a general over-throw, if they were to be examined one by one and then methodically replaced in condition as discovered. With my jars of Black Scorpions, the inspection was the matter of a moment. It was well for me that I always had this auxiliary establishment before my eyes. On the 22nd of July, at six o’clock in the morning, raising the cardboard screen, I found the mother beneath it, with her little ones grouped on her chine like a sort of white mantlet. I experienced one of those seconds of sweet contentment which, at intervals, reward the long-suffering observer. For the first time, I had before my eyes the fine spectacle of the Scorpioness clad in her young. The delivery was quite recent; it must have taken place during the night; for, on the previous evening, the mother was bare. Further successes awaited me: on the next day, a second mother is whitened with her brood; the day after that, two others at a time are in the same condition. That makes four. It is more than my ambition hoped for. With four families of Scorpions and a few quiet days before me, I can find sweets in life. All the more so as fortune loads me with her favours. Ever since the first discovery in the jars, I have been thinking of the glass cage and asking myself whether the Languedocian Scorpion might not be as precocious as her black sister. Let us go quick and see. I turn over the twenty-five tiles. A glorious success! I feel one of those hot waves of enthusiasm with which I was familiar at twenty rush through my old veins. Under three of the lot of tiles, I find a mother burdened with her family. One has little ones already shooting up, about a week old, as the sequel of my observations informed me; the two others have borne their children recently, in the course of last night, as is proved by certain remnants jealously guarded under the paunch. We shall see presently what those remnants represent.