The young Chick has a temporary callosity at the end of its beak, which serves it as a pick-axe to break the shell. The young Scorpion, condensed, to economise space, to the dimensions of a grain of rice, waits inertly for help from without. The mother has to do everything. She works with such a will that the accessories of childbirth disappear altogether, even the few sterile eggs being swept away with the others in the general flow. Not a remnant of the now useless tatters; everything has returned to the mother’s stomach; and the spot of ground that received the litter is swept absolutely clear. So here we have the young scrupulously cleaned and free. They are white. Their length from head to tail, measures nine millimetres [48] in the Languedocian Scorpion and four [49] in the Black. As the liberating toilet is completed, they climb, first one and then the other, on the mother’s back, hoisting themselves, without excessive haste, along the claws, which the Scorpion holds flat on the ground, in order to facilitate the ascent. Close packed one against the other, entangled at random, they form a continuous sheet upon her back. With the aid of their little claws, they settle themselves pretty firmly. I find some difficulty in sweeping them away with the point of a camel-hair pencil without more or less hurting the feeble creatures. At this stage neither steed nor burden budges: it is the fit moment for experiment. Clad in her offspring assembled to form a mantle of white muslin, the Scorpion is a spectacle worthy of attention. She remains motionless, with her tail curled on high. If I threaten the family too closely with a straw, she at once lifts her two claws in an angry attitude, rarely adopted in her own defence. The two fists are raised as if for sparring, the nippers wide open, ready to thrust and parry. The tail is seldom brandished: to loosen it suddenly would give a shock to the spine and perhaps make a part of the load fall to the ground. The bold, sudden, imposing menace of the fists suffices. My curiosity takes no notice of it. I push off one of the little ones and place it facing its mother, a finger’s breadth distant. The mother does not seem to trouble about the accident: motionless she was, motionless she remains. Why perturb herself about a tumble? The fallen child will be quite able to manage for itself. It gesticulates, it moves about: and then, finding one of the mother’s claws within its reach, it clambers up nimbly enough and joins the crowd of its brothers. It resumes its seat in the saddle, but is far from displaying the agility of the Lycosa’s sons, who are expert riders, versed in the art of vaulting on horseback.