I was in those days busy with the poison of the Languedocian scorpion and its action upon insects. To direct the sting toward this or the other part of the victim and moreover to regulate its emission would be absolutely impossible and also very dangerous, as long as the scorpions were allowed to act as they pleased. I wished to be able myself to choose the part to be wounded; I likewise wished to vary the dose of poison at will. How to set about it? The scorpion has no jarlike receptacle in which the venom is accumulated and stored, like that possessed, for instance, by the wasp and the bee. The last segment of the tail, gourd shaped and surmounted by the sting, contains only a powerful mass of muscles along which lie the delicate vessels that secrete the poison. In default of a poison jar which I would have placed on one side and drawn upon at my convenience, I detach the last segment, forming the base of the sting. I obtain it from a dead and already withered scorpion. A watch glass serves as a basin. Here, I tear and crush the piece in a few drops of water and leave it to steep for four-and-twenty hours. The result is the liquid which I propose to use for the inoculation. If any poison remained in my animal's caudal gourd, there must be at least some traces of it in the infusion in the watch glass. My hypodermic syringe is of the simplest. It consists of a little glass tube, tapering sharply at one end. By drawing in my breath, I fill it with the liquid to be tested; I expel the contents by blowing. Its point is almost as fine as a hair and enables me to regulate the dose to the degree which I want. A cubic millimeter is the usual charge. The injection has to be made at parts that are generally covered with horn. So as not to break the point of my fragile instrument, I prepare the way with a needle, with which I prick the victim at the spot required. I insert the tip of the loaded injector in the hole thus made and I blow. The thing is done in a moment, very neatly and in an orthodox fashion, favorable to delicate experiments. I am delighted with my modest apparatus. I am equally delighted with the results. The scorpion himself, when wounding with his sting, in which the poison is not diluted as mine is in the watch glass, would not produce effects like those of my pricks. Here is something more brutal, producing more convulsion in the sufferer. The virus of my contriving excels the scorpion's.