Great ill calls for great remedies. I need an insuperable precinct, much more extensive than that of the cages, which establishments do not give scope to the pastimes of my specimens. I have a forcing-frame in which some fleshy plants are stored during the winter. It goes to a depth of three feet into the ground. The brick work is plastered and smoothed with all the care that the mason’s trowel and wet rag can give it. I cover the bottom with fine sand and large flat stones distributed here and there. Having made these preparations, I instal inside the frame, each under his own stone, the remaining Scorpions, and those which I have captured this very morning complete my collection. With the aid of this vertical barrier shall I this time retain my specimens and see what interests me so greatly? I shall see nothing at all. Next morning, all of them, old and new, have disappeared. There were twenty of them: and not one remains. Had I reflected ever so little, I should have expected this. At the season of persistent rain, in the autumn, how often have I not found the Black Scorpion hiding in the crevices of the windows? Fleeing the dampness of his usual retreats, the dark corners of the yards, he has clambered up to me by scaling the front wall to the height of the first storey. The slight roughness of the plaster was enough to enable his grapnels to make the perpendicular ascent. Despite his corpulence, the Languedocian is as good a climber as the Black Scorpion. I have a proof of it before my eyes. A barrier three feet high, as smooth as a wash of common mortar can make it, has not stopped one of my captives. In a single night, the whole band has decamped from the frame. Rearing in the open air, even within walls, is recognized as being impracticable: the lack of discipline in the flock nullifies the shepherd’s devices. One resource alone remains, that of internment under cover. Thus the year ends, with some ten pans standing on the large table in my study. Out of doors is prohibited: those night prowlers, the cats, seeing something move about in my appliances, would upset everything. On the other hand, the population is restricted under each cover and amounts to two or three inhabitants at most. There is no space. In the absence of a sufficiency of neighbours and also of the violent exposure to the sun which they enjoyed on their native hills, the prisoners on my table seem smitten with home-sickness and hardly respond to my expectations. Cowering under their potsherds or hanging to the trellis, most of them slumber, dreaming of liberty. The small results which I obtain from my bored specimens is far from satisfying me. I want something more than this. The close of the year is spent in gleaning petty facts and making plans for a better establishment.