A week later, after a certain number of these incidents, I inspect the place and examine the caves one by one, to ascertain the amount of provisions consumed. The wings, those uneatable leavings, will enlighten me in this respect. Well, save for rare exceptions, there are no wings detached from the corpses. Nearly all the Butterflies are intact; they have dried up without being eaten. A few of them, three or four, have been decapitated. The results of my conscientious investigations are limited to this. During a week, in the full swing of activity, a tiny mouthful has been enough for these head-eaters. There are twenty-five of them in my establishment, twenty-five sated with a crumb. To them the Butterfly must be an almost unknown fare. It is doubtful whether, down in their rocky labyrinths, they ever capture such game, which loves tall blossoms and sinuous flights. Unfamiliar with this quarry, they may disdain it, merely taking a bite in the absence of food more to their taste. Now what can they find in their wild, sun-parched territory? Locusts apparently. Crickets, a horde that is never lacking wherever there is a blade of grass to nibble. It is on these that I rely by preference when the season of the Pieres and other ordinary Butterflies closes. The paddock then abounds in Crickets and Locusts, a very youthful generation, clad only in a short jacket. These are surely the proper diet for my Scorpions, with their love of tender mouthfuls. Some are green, others grey; some fat, others thin; some are mounted on stilts, others are squat and short-shanked. The consumers can make their choice amid this varied assortment. At nightfall, in the area faintly lighted by the lantern, I distribute my crop of Locusts, who are fairly quiet at this late hour. The Scorpions lose no time in making their appearance. The living manna is wriggling all about them. At the least tap, the nearest strollers decamp; they find things too exciting. It is an exact repetition of the experiments with the Butterflies: none sets any store by the tit-bits, most certainly seen and even touched, for the Scorpions often encounter them and walk on them. I see a Locust who, as luck will have it, has got caught in the fingers of a passing Scorpion; and the latter is too good-natured even to close his pincers. Ever so gentle a squeeze would put him in possession of an excellent head of game; and heedlessly he allows it to slip away. I see a little Green Locust hoisted by accident on the back of a promenader, a terrible mount that carries her quietly, without dreaming of harming her. A hundred times I witness face-to-face meetings, defensive retreats, swishes of the tail that sweep aside the heedless creature encountered on the highway, but never any serious hand-to-hand fighting, still less pursuit. It is only at rare intervals that my daily observations show me one or other of my frugal eaters in possession of a Locust.