Here I house the Scorpions, two by two and of different sexes, as far as I am able to judge. No outward characteristic that I know of distinguishes the males from the females. I take the big bellied specimens for females and the less obese for males. As age intervenes with its variations of stoutness, mistakes are inevitable, unless I first open the subject’s paunch, a procedure which would cut short any attempt at rearing. We will allow ourselves to be guided by size, since we have no other means of judging, and house the Scorpions two by two, one corpulent and brown, the other less obese and of a lighter colour. There are certain to be some actual couples among the number. Here are a few details for the benefit of whoso may care one day to take up similar studies. An animal-breeder’s trade calls for apprenticeship; the experience of others is not unhelpful, especially when the animals in question are dangerous to deal with. It would never do inadvertently to lay a hand on one of my present prisoners who had escaped from his cage and lay skulking among the utensils littering the table. Serious precautions must be taken by those who propose to spend whole years in the company of such neighbours. They are as follows: The trellis-work dome is fitted deep into the pan and touches the earthenware bottom. Between the two there is a circular space which I fill with clay soil, packed while wet. So fitted, the wire cover is quite immovable; the apparatus runs no risk of coming to pieces and yielding a way of escape. On the other hand, if the Scorpions dig deeply on the edges of the earthy space at their disposal, they come upon either the wire-gauze or the pottery, both of which are insuperable obstacles. So we need have no fear of escape. But this is not enough. While we have to see to our own safety, we must also think of the captives’ welfare. The dwelling is hygienic and easy to carry into the sun or the shade, as the observation of the moment may demand; but it does not contain the victuals with which the Scorpions, frugal though they be, cannot dispense indefinitely. With a view to feeding them without moving the cover, the trellis-work is pierced at the top with a small opening through which I slip the live game, caught from day to day as needed. After this has been served, a plug of cotton-wool closes the buttery hatch. My caged specimens, soon after their installation, enable me to watch their work as excavators even better than the occupants of the open-air community, for whom my trowel has prepared an entrance-passage beneath the stones. The Languedocian Scorpion is master of craft; he knows how to house himself in a cell of his own making. In order to establish themselves, each of my interned prisoners has at his disposal a wide, curved potsherd, which, set firmly in the sand, provides the foundation of a grotto, a simple arched fissure. The Scorpion has only to dig beneath this and lodge himself as comfortably as he can.