Behold me then the owner of three establishments, each possessing its advantages and its defects: the free colony at the end of the paddock; the wire-gauze cages in my study; and lastly the glazed rock-garden. I shall consult them turn and turn about, especially the last. To the evidence supplied in this manner we will add the rare data gathered from stones turned over on the original sites. The Scorpions’ luxurious Crystal Palace, now the leading curiosity of my home, stands all the year round in the open air, on a bench at a few steps from my door. Not a member of the family passes it without a glance. Taciturn creatures, shall I succeed in making you speak? CHAPTER II THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: FOOD I begin by learning that, despite his terrible weapon, a likely token of brigandage and gluttony, the Languedocian Scorpion is an extremely frugal eater. When I visit him at home, among the pebbles of the adjacent hills, I carefully ransack his haunts in the hope of coming upon the remains of an ogre’s feast, and I come upon nothing more than the crumbs of a hermit’s collation: in fact, as a rule, I find nothing at all. A few green wing-cases belonging to some Tree bug; wings of the adult Ant-lion; dismembered segments of a puny Locust: these make up my list. The hamlet in the paddock, assiduously consulted, tells me more. After the fashion of a valetudinarian who lives on a diet and eats at stated hours, the Scorpion has his feeding-season. For six or seven months, from October till April, he does not leave his dwelling, though always fit and ready to wield his tail. During this period, if I put any sort of food within his reach, he sweeps it out of the burrow with the back of his tail and pays it no further attention. It is at the end of March that the first cravings of the stomach are aroused. At this season, on inspecting the cabins, I sometimes find one or other of my specimens quietly gnawing at a capture, a meagre Myriapod, such as a Cryptops or Lithobius. For that matter, the frequency of the item is far from making up for its smallness; and it is long before the consumer of the scanty morsel finds himself in possession of a second. I expected something better: “A brute like that,” I said to myself, “so well armed for battle, cannot be content with trifles. We do not load our pea-shooters with a charge of dynamite to bring down a Sparrow: that awful sting was never meant to stab a humble little animal. The Scorpion’s food must be some powerful quarry.” I was wrong. Terribly equipped for fighting though he be, the Scorpion is an indifferent hunter. He is a poltroon into the bargain. A little Mantis, come into being that same day and encountered on the road, fills him with dismay. A Cabbage Butterfly [7] puts him to flight merely by beating the ground with her clipped wings: the harmless cripple overawes his cowardice. It needs the stimulus of hunger to persuade him to attack.