The above theory, however, hardly accords with the experience of Mr. W. G. Bidie, also of India, and that very part of it where Mr. Bourne’s experiments were made—viz. Madras. Writing to _Nature_, he says: “One morning a servant brought me a large specimen of this scorpion (the common black one of Southern India), which, having stayed out too long in its nocturnal rambles, had apparently got bewildered at daybreak and been unable to find its way home. To keep it safe the creature was at once put into a glazed entomological case. Having a few leisure minutes in the course of the forenoon, I thought I would see how my prisoner was getting on, and to have a better view of it, the case was placed in a window in the rays of the hot sun. The light and heat seemed to irritate it very much, and this recalled to my mind a story which I had read somewhere that a scorpion on being surrounded with fire had committed suicide. I hesitated about subjecting my pet to such a terrible ordeal, but taking a common botanical lens, I focussed the rays of the sun on its back” (so that Apollo may have flayed Marsyas as a mild alternative). “The moment this was done it began to run hurriedly about the case, hissing and spitting in a very fierce way. This experiment was repeated some four or five times with like results, but on trying it once again the scorpion turned up its tail and plunged the sting, quick as lightning, into its own back. The infliction of the wound was followed by a sudden escape of fluid, and a friend, standing by me, called out, ‘See! it has stung itself: it is dead.’ And sure enough in less than half a minute life was quite extinct.” This seems plain enough. The scorpion had not died of the heat, up to the moment at which it stung itself—an act which would require some vital energy. It did sting itself, and in less than half a minute afterwards it was dead. Moreover, as the experiments with the lens were intermittent, there seems no more reason why the last one should have been fatal than the other four or five. It is, perhaps, possible to imagine that the scorpion was almost dead before, that the last heating caused it to expire, and that in the moment of doing so it stung itself by involuntary muscular action. There is nothing, however, in the narrative to suggest this, but quite the contrary. Supposing the sting to have been a voluntary act, what could the scorpion have intended except to injure itself? Had it ever in its life used its sting with any other purpose than that of doing injury? Mr. Bidie adds: “I have written this brief note to show (1) that animals may commit suicide; (2) that the poison of certain animals may be destructive to themselves.”[155]