Meantime, signs of the colouring appear; the tail and belly are tinged with saffron, the claws assume the soft brilliancy of transparent amber. Youth beautifies all things. The little Languedocian Scorpions are really splendid. If they remained thus, if they did not carry a poison-still, soon to become threatening, they would be pretty creatures which one would find a pleasure in rearing. Soon the wish for emancipation awakens in them. They gladly descend from the mother’s back to frolic merrily in the neighbourhood. If they stray too far, the mother cautions them and brings them back again by sweeping the rake of her arms over the sand. At dozing-time, the sight furnished by the Scorpioness is almost as good as that of the hen and her chicks resting. Most of the young ones are on the ground, pressed close against the mother; a few are stationed on the white saddle-cloth, a delightful cushion. There are some who clamber up the mother’s tail, perch on the top of the bend and seem to delight in looking down from that point of vantage upon the crowd. More acrobats arrive, who dislodge them and take their places. All want their share in the curiosities provided by the gazebo. The bulk of the family is around the mother; there is a constant swarm of brats that crawl under the belly and there squat, leaving their forehead, with the gleaming black eye-points, outside. The more restless prefer the mother’s legs, which to them represent a gymnasium; they here swing as on a trapeze. Next, at their leisure, the whole troop climb up to the spine again, resume their places, settle down; and nothing more stirs, neither mother nor little ones. This period wherein the emancipation is matured and prepared lasts for a week, exactly as long as the strange labour that trebles the volume without food. The family remains upon the mother’s back for a fortnight, all told. The Lycosa carries her young for six or seven months, during which time they are always active and lively, although unfed. What do those of the Scorpion eat, at least after the excoriation that has given them agility and a new life? Does the mother invite them to her meals and reserve the tenderest morsels of her repasts for them? She invites nobody; she reserves nothing. I serve her a Cricket, chosen among the small game that seems to me best-suited to the delicate nature of her sons. While she gnaws the morsel, without troubling in the least about her surroundings, one of the little ones slips down her spine, crawls along her forehead and leans over to see what is happening. He touches the jaws with the tip of his leg; then briskly he retreats, startled. He goes away; and he is well-advised. The abyss engaged in the work of mastication, so far from reserving him a mouthful, might perhaps snap him up and swallow him without giving him a further thought.