THE LIFE
OF THE SCORPION
BY
J. HENRI FABRE
TRANSLATED BY
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
FELLOW OF ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON
AND
Bernard Miall
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE DWELLING 3
II THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: FOOD 30
III THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE POISON 53
IV THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE IMMUNITY OF THE LARVÆ 83
V THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: PRELUDES TO THE WEDDING 111
VI THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE PAIRING 134
VII THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE FAMILY 153
VIII THE PENTATOMÆ AND THEIR EGGS 183
IX THE MASKED BUG 216
X THE TEREBINTH LOUSE: THE GALLS 242
XI THE TEREBINTH LOUSE: THE MIGRATION 271
XII THE DORTHESIA 290
XIII THE KERMES OF THE OAK 311
THE LIFE OF THE SCORPION
CHAPTER I
THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE DWELLING
The Scorpion is an uncommunicative creature, secret in his practices
and disagreeable to deal with, so that his history, apart from
anatomical detail, amounts to little or nothing. The scalpel of the
experts has made us acquainted with his organic structure; but no
observer, as far as I know, has thought of interviewing him, with any
sort of persistence, on the subject of his private habits. Ripped up,
after being steeped in spirits of wine, he is very well-known; acting
within the domain of his instincts, he is hardly known at all. And yet
none of the segmented animals is more deserving of a detailed
biography. He has at all times appealed to the popular imagination,
even to the point of figuring among the signs of the zodiac. Fear made
the gods, said Lucretius. Deified by terror, the Scorpion is
immortalized in the sky by a constellation and in the almanac by the
symbol for the month of October.
I made the acquaintance of the Languedocian Scorpion (Scorpio
occitanus, LAT) half a century ago, in the Villeneuve hills, on the far
side of the Rhone, opposite Avignon. When the thrice-blessed Thursday
[1] came, from morning till night I used to turn over the stones in
quest of the Scolopendra, [2] the chief subject of the thesis which I
was preparing for my doctor’s degree. Sometimes, instead of that
magnificent horror, the mighty Myriapod, I would find, under the raised
stone, another and no less unpleasant recluse. It was he. With his tail
turned over his back and a drop of poison gleaming at the end of the
sting, he lay displaying his pincers at the entrance to a burrow.
Br-r-r-r! Have done with the formidable creature! The stone fell back
into its place.
Utterly tired out, I used to return from my excursions rich in
Scolopendræ and richer still in those illusions which paint the future
rose-colour when we first begin to bite freely into the bread of
knowledge. Science! The witch! I used to come home with joy in my
heart: I had found some Centipedes. What more was needed to complete my
ingenuous happiness? I carried off the Scolopendræ and left the
Scorpions behind, not without a secret feeling that a day would come
when I should have to concern myself with them.
Fifty years have elapsed; and that day has come. It behoves me, after
the Spiders, [3] his near neighbours in organization, to cross-examine
my old acquaintance, chief of the Arachnids in our district. It so
happens that the Languedocian Scorpion abounds in my neighbourhood;
nowhere have I seen him so plentiful as on the Sérignan hills, with
their sunny, rocky slopes beloved by the arbutus and the arborescent
heath. There the chilly creature finds a sub-tropical temperature and
also a sandy soil, easy to dig. This is, I think, as far as he goes
towards the north.
His favourite spots are the bare expanses poor in vegetation, where the
rock, outcropping in vertical strata, is baked by the sun and worn by
the wind and rain until it ends by crumbling into flakes. He is usually
found in colonies at quite a distance from one another, as though the
members of a single family, migrating in all directions, were becoming
a tribe. It is not sociability, it is anything but that. Excessively
intolerant and passionately devoted to solitude, they continually
occupy their shelters alone. In vain do I seek them out: I never find
two of them under the same stone; or, to be more accurate, when there
are two, one is engaged in eating the other. We shall have occasion to
see the savage hermit ending the nuptial festivities in this fashion.
The lodging is very rough and ready. Let us turn over the stones, which
are generally flat and fairly large. The Scorpion’s presence is
indicated by a cavity as wide as the neck of a quart bottle and a few
inches deep. In stooping, we commonly see the master of the house on
the threshold of his dwelling, with his pincers outspread and his tail
in the posture of defence. At other times, when he owns a deeper cell,
the hermit is invisible. We have to use a small pocket-trowel to bring
him out into the light of day. Here he is, lifting or brandishing his
weapon. ’Ware fingers!
I take him by the tail with a pair of tweezers and slip him, head
foremost, into a stout paper bag, which will isolate him from the other
prisoners. The whole of my formidable harvest goes into a tin box. In
this way both the collecting and the transport are carried out with
perfect safety.
Before housing my animals, let me briefly describe them. The common
Black Scorpion (Scorpio europæus, LINN.) is known to all. He frequents
the dark holes and corners near our dwelling-places; on rainy days in
autumn he makes his way indoors, sometimes even under our bed-clothes.
The odious animal causes us more fright than damage. Although not rare
in my present abode, the results of its visits are never in the least
serious. The weird beast, overrated in reputation, is repulsive rather
than dangerous.
Much more to be feared and much less well-known generally is the
Languedocian Scorpion, resident in the Mediterranean provinces. Far
from seeking our habitations, he lives apart, in the untilled
solitudes. Beside the Black Scorpion he is a giant who, when
full-grown, measures three to three and a half inches in length. His
colouring is the yellow of faded straw.
The tail, which is really the animal’s abdomen, is a series of five
prismatic segments, shaped like little kegs whose staves meet in
undulating ridges resembling strings of beads. Similar cords cover the
arms and fore-arms of the nippers and divide them into long facets.
Others meander along the back like the joints of a cuirass whose seams
are adorned with a freakish milled edging. These bead-like
protuberances give the Scorpion’s armour a fierce and robustious
appearance which is characteristic of the Languedocian Scorpion. It is
as though the animal were fashioned out of chips hewn with an adze.
The tail ends in a sixth joint, which is smooth and vesicular. This is
the gourd in which the poison, a formidable fluid resembling water in
appearance, is elaborated and held in reserve. A dark, curved and very
sharp sting completes the apparatus. A pore, visible only under the
lens, opens at some distance from the point. Through this the venomous
liquid is injected into the puncture. The sting is very hard and very
sharp. Holding it between my finger-tips, I can push it through a sheet
of cardboard as easily as if I were using a needle.
Owing to its bold curve, the sting points downwards when the tail is
extended in a straight line. To make use of his weapon, therefore, the
Scorpion must raise it, turn it over and strike upwards. This, in fact,
is his invariable practice. In order to pink the adversary subdued by
the nippers, the tail is arched over the animal’s back and brought
forward. The Scorpion, for that matter, is almost always in this
position: whether in motion or at rest, he arches his tail over his
back. He very rarely drags it behind him, relaxed into a straight line.
The pincers, those buccal hands recalling the claws of the Crayfish,
are organs of battle and of information. When moving forwards, the
Scorpion holds them in front of him, with the two fingers opened, to
take stock of objects encountered on the way. When he wants to stab an
enemy, the pincers seize the foe and hold him motionless, while the
sting is brought into play over the assailant’s back. Lastly, when he
wishes to nibble a tit-bit at leisure, they serve as hands and hold the
prey within the reach of the mouth. They are never used for walking,
for stability or for excavation.
That is the function of the real legs. These are suddenly truncated and
end in a group of short, movable claws, faced by a short, fine point,
which, to some extent, serves as a thumb. The stump is finished off
with rough bristles. The whole constitutes an excellent grapnel, which
explains the Scorpion’s aptitude for roaming over the trellis-work of
my wire-gauze covers, for making long halts there, motionless and
upside down, and, lastly, for scrambling along a vertical wall,
notwithstanding his clumsiness and weight.
Underneath, just behind the legs, are the combs, those strange organs,
an exclusive attribute of the Scorpions. They owe their name to their
structure, consisting of a long row of plates, set close together like
the teeth of a hair-comb. The anatomists are inclined to ascribe to
them the functions of a clutch intended to hold the couple bound
together at the moment of pairing. We will leave it at that until we
are better informed, provided that the specimens which I propose to
rear tell me their secret.
On the other hand, I know of another function, which is very easily
observed when the Scorpion meanders, belly uppermost, over the wire
trellis of my dish-covers. When he is at rest, the two combs are laid
flat on the abdomen, behind the legs. The moment he begins to walk,
they stick out on either side, at right angles to the body, like the
naked wings of an unfledged nestling. They sway gently up and down,
reminding us of the balancing-pole of an inexperienced rope-dancer. [4]
If the Scorpion stops, they are at once retracted, fall back upon the
belly and cease to move: if he resumes his walk, they are at once
extended and again begin their gentle oscillation. The animal therefore
seems to use them at least as a balancing mechanism.
The eyes, eight in number, are divided into three groups. In the middle
of that weird segment which is at once head and thorax, two large and
very convex eyes gleam side by side, reminding us of the Lycosa’s [5]
superb lenses; they are apparently in both instances for use at close
range, because of their great convexity. A ridge of protuberances
arranged in a wavy line serves as an eyebrow and gives them a fierce
appearance. Their axis, which is almost horizontal, can hardly allow
them more than lateral vision.
The same remark applies to two other groups, each composed of three
eyes, which are very small and placed much farther forward, nearly on
the edge of the sudden truncation that forms an arch above the mouth.
On both right and left the three tiny lenses are set in a short
straight line, their axis pointing laterally. On the whole, both the
small and the large eyes are so arranged that it can by no means be
easy for the animal to obtain a clear view ahead.
Extremely short-sighted and squinting outrageously, how does the
Scorpion manage to steer himself? Like a blind man, he gropes his way:
he guides himself with his hands, that is to say, his pincers, which he
carries outstretched, with the fingers open, to sound the space before
him. Watch two Scorpions wandering in the open air in my rearing-cages.
A meeting would be disagreeable, sometimes even dangerous for them.
Nevertheless, the one behind always goes ahead as though he did not
perceive his neighbour; but, as soon as he touches the other ever so
little with his pincers, he at once gives a sudden start, a sign of
surprise and uneasiness, followed at once by a retreat and a change of
direction. To recognize the irascible one thus overhauled, he had to
touch him.
Let us now instal our prisoners. I shall never learn all I want to know
by turning over stones and making chance observations on the adjacent
hills: I must resort to keeping the animals in captivity, the only
manner of inducing them to reveal their domestic habits. What
rearing-method shall I employ? One in particular appeals to me, one
which will leave the creature its full liberty, which will relieve me
of the cares of catering and which will enable me to inspect my
captives at any hour of the day, from year’s end to year’s end. This
seems to me an excellent means, far superior to the others, so much so
that I reckon on a magnificent success.
It is a question of establishing within my own grounds, in the open
air, a hamlet of Scorpions, by cunning securing for them the same
conditions of well-being which they enjoyed at home. In the first days
of January, I found my colony right at the end of the harmas, [6] in
the quiet corner exposed to the sun and sheltered from the north wind
by a thick rosemary-hedge. The ground, a mixture of pebbles and red
clayey soil, is unsuitable. Considering the temperament of my charges,
great stay-at-homes from what I can see, this is easily remedied. For
each of my colonists I dig a hole, of a gallon or two in capacity, and
fill it with sandy earth similar to that of the original site. I pack
this earth lightly, which will give it the consistence needed for
digging without land-slips, and in it I contrived a short
entrance-passage, the beginning of the excavation which the Scorpion
will not fail to make in order to obtain a cell in conformity with his
tastes. A wide flat stone covers and overlaps the whole. Opposite the
passage of my own making, I scoop out a hollow: this is the
entrance-door.
In front of the hollow I place a Scorpion, taken that moment from the
paper bag in which he has just been conveyed from the mountain. Seeing
a retreat similar to those with which he is familiar, he goes in of his
own accord and does not show himself again. In this way I establish the
hamlet, consisting of some twenty inhabitants, all adults. The
dwellings, placed at a suitable distance from one another, to avoid the
quarrels liable to occur among neighbours, are arranged in a row on a
stretch of ground cleared with the rake. It will be easy for me to
observe events at a glance, even at night, by the light of a lantern.
As to food, I need not trouble about that. My guests will find their
own provisions, for the spot is quite as well-stocked with game as that
from which I brought them.
The colonies in the paddock are not enough. Certain observations call
for minute attention which is incompatible with the disturbances out of
doors. A second menagerie is set up, this time on the large table in my
study, a table around which I have already covered and am still
covering so many miles in pursuit of stubborn knowledge. Bring up the
big earthenware pans, my usual apparatus! Filled with sifted sandy
earth, each receives two broad potsherds, which, half buried, form a
ceiling and represent the refuge under the stones. The establishment is
surrounded by the dome of a wire-gauze cover.
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.
The excavator does not dally long, especially in the sun, whose glare
annoys him. Steadying himself on his fourth pair of legs, the Scorpion
rakes the ground with the three other pairs: he turns it over, reducing
it to a loose dust with a graceful agility that reminds us of a Dog
scratching a hole in which to bury a bone. After the brisk twirling of
the legs comes the touch of the broom. With his tail laid flat and
relaxed to the utmost, he pushes back the earthy mass, making the same
movement as does our elbow when thrusting an obstacle aside. If the
rubbish thus shot back be not sufficiently out of the way, the sweeper
returns, repeats the process and finishes the job.
Observe that the pincers, notwithstanding their strength, never take
part in the digging, even to the extent of extracting a grain of sand.
They are reserved for feeding, fighting, and, above all, enquiry, and
would lose the exquisite sensitiveness of their fingers if used for
that heavy task. In this way the legs and tail, in repeated
alternations, scratch the soil and thrust the rubbish outside. At last
the worker disappears beneath the potsherd. A mound of sand obstructs
the entrance to the vault. At moments we see it shaking and partly
slipping, signs that the work is still going on with a further shooting
of rubbish, until the cell attains a suitable size. When the hermit
wants to go out, he will, without difficulty push back the crumbling
barricade.
The Black Scorpion of our houses has not this capacity for making
himself a crypt. He is found in the mortar collected at the bottom of
walls, the woodwork disjointed by the damp, the rubbish-heaps in dark
places, but he restricts himself to using these refuges as he finds
them, being unable to improve the hiding-place by his own industry. He
does not know how to dig. This ignorance is apparently due to his
feeble broom, his smooth, slender tail, very different from the
Languedocian’s, which is powerful and armed with knotty protuberances.
In the open air, the colony in the enclosure finds a lodging modelled
by my care. Under the flat stones where I have contrived to outline a
cell in the sandy earth, each of them at once disappears and labours to
complete the work, as I perceived by the mound heaped upon the
threshold. Wait a few more days and lift the stone: at a depth of three
or four inches we see the lair, the burrow, occupied at night and open
also by day, when the weather is bad. Sometimes a sudden bend widens
the recess into a spacious chamber. In front of the mansion,
immediately under the stone, is the entrance-hall.
This, by day, in the hours of blazing sunshine, is where the solitary
prefers to be, in the blessed heat gently shaded by the stone. When
turned out of this hot bath, his supreme felicity, he brandishes his
knotty tail and swiftly retreats indoors, out of reach of the light and
of our eyes. Replace the stone and come back fifteen minutes later: we
shall find him once more on the threshold of the cavern, where it is so
pleasant when a generous sun warms the roof.
The cold season is thus passed in a very monotonous fashion. Both in
the hamlet of the enclosure and the menagerie of the cages, the
Scorpions go out neither by day nor at night, as I observe by the
barricade of sand which remains untouched at the entrance to the home.
Are they torpid? Not a bit of it! My frequent visits show them always
ready for action, with curved and threatening tails. If the weather
grows cooler, they retreat to the bottom of their burrows; if it is
fine, they return to the threshold to warm their backs by the touch of
the sunny stone. Nothing more for the moment: the anchorite’s life is
spent in long spells of meditation, either in the cool moist crypt or
under the porch of the house, behind the sandy barricade.
In the course of April a sudden change takes place. In the cages, the
shelter of the potsherds is abandoned. Gravely the occupants roam
around the arena, clamber up the trellis and stand there, even by day.
Several of them sleep out and do not go home again, preferring the
out-of-door distractions to soft slumbers in the alcove under ground.
In the hamlet in the enclosure, events are more serious. Some of the
inhabitants, selected from the smaller, leave the house at night and go
wandering without my knowing what becomes of them. I expect to see them
return at the end of their stroll, for no other part of the paddock has
stones to suit them. Well, not one comes home; all that have gone have
disappeared for good. Soon the big ones also display the same vagabond
mood; and at last the emigration becomes so active that a moment is at
hand when I shall have nothing left of my free colony. Farewell to my
lovingly cherished plans! The open-air community, on which I based my
fondest hopes, becomes rapidly depopulated; its inhabitants make off,
vanish I know not whither. All my seeking fails to recover a single one
of the runaways.
Great ill calls for great remedies. I need an insuperable precinct,
much more extensive than that of the cages, which establishments do not
give scope to the pastimes of my specimens. I have a forcing-frame in
which some fleshy plants are stored during the winter. It goes to a
depth of three feet into the ground. The brick work is plastered and
smoothed with all the care that the mason’s trowel and wet rag can give
it. I cover the bottom with fine sand and large flat stones distributed
here and there. Having made these preparations, I instal inside the
frame, each under his own stone, the remaining Scorpions, and those
which I have captured this very morning complete my collection. With
the aid of this vertical barrier shall I this time retain my specimens
and see what interests me so greatly?
I shall see nothing at all. Next morning, all of them, old and new,
have disappeared. There were twenty of them: and not one remains. Had I
reflected ever so little, I should have expected this. At the season of
persistent rain, in the autumn, how often have I not found the Black
Scorpion hiding in the crevices of the windows? Fleeing the dampness of
his usual retreats, the dark corners of the yards, he has clambered up
to me by scaling the front wall to the height of the first storey. The
slight roughness of the plaster was enough to enable his grapnels to
make the perpendicular ascent.
Despite his corpulence, the Languedocian is as good a climber as the
Black Scorpion. I have a proof of it before my eyes. A barrier three
feet high, as smooth as a wash of common mortar can make it, has not
stopped one of my captives. In a single night, the whole band has
decamped from the frame.
Rearing in the open air, even within walls, is recognized as being
impracticable: the lack of discipline in the flock nullifies the
shepherd’s devices. One resource alone remains, that of internment
under cover. Thus the year ends, with some ten pans standing on the
large table in my study. Out of doors is prohibited: those night
prowlers, the cats, seeing something move about in my appliances, would
upset everything.
On the other hand, the population is restricted under each cover and
amounts to two or three inhabitants at most. There is no space. In the
absence of a sufficiency of neighbours and also of the violent exposure
to the sun which they enjoyed on their native hills, the prisoners on
my table seem smitten with home-sickness and hardly respond to my
expectations. Cowering under their potsherds or hanging to the trellis,
most of them slumber, dreaming of liberty. The small results which I
obtain from my bored specimens is far from satisfying me. I want
something more than this. The close of the year is spent in gleaning
petty facts and making plans for a better establishment.
The outcome of these plans is a glazed prison whose panes will give no
hold to the grapnels and will make climbing impossible. The joiner
builds me a frame, the glazier completes the work. I myself varnish the
woodwork, so as to make the uprights very slippery. The structure looks
like four window-frames placed side by side and put together to form a
rectangle. The bottom is a flooring with a layer of sand. A lid covers
it altogether when the weather is cold and especially when the rain
threatens a flood, which would have disastrous effects on this
undrained ground. It is raised more or less high according to the state
of the day. The enclosure has ample room for two dozen chambers, each
with its potsherd and its occupant. Moreover, wide alleys and spacious
cross-roads allow long walks to be taken without hindrance.
Well, at the very moment when I believe myself to have solved the
housing-question satisfactorily, I perceive that the glazed park will
not retain its population long, if I do not invent a remedy. The glass
stops short any attempt at scaling: for lack of adhesive sandals, the
Scorpions cannot grip a surface of this kind. They flounder against the
panes, it is true, and raise themselves to their full length on the
support of their tail: an excellent buttress, but they have hardly left
the ground before they fall back again, heavily.
Things go wrong in respect of the wooden uprights, though these are
made as narrow as possible and varnished with particular care. The
stubborn climbers clamber little by little along these smooth tracks;
they halt from time to time, clinging to the greasy pole, and then
resume the difficult ascent. I surprise some who have reached the top
and are on the point of escaping. My tweezers replace them in the fold.
As the ventilation of the home demands that the lid should remain
raised during the greater part of the day, the place would soon be
wholly deserted if I did not see to it.
I think of greasing the uprights with a mixture of oil and soap. This
restrains the fugitives slightly, without succeeding in stopping them.
Their delicate little claws manage to sink into the pores of the wood
through the substance coating it and the ascent begins anew. Let us try
a non-porous obstacle. I hang the walls with glazed paper. This time
the difficulty is insurmountable for the big, pot-bellied ones; it is
not quite so effective with regard to the others, who, being nimbler in
their gait, try to hoist themselves up and often succeed in doing so. I
get the better of them only by glossing the glazed paper with soot.
Henceforth there are no more escapes, though attempts at flight
continue. Coming after the experiment with the forcing-frames, these
feats of prowess on slippery surfaces tell us all there is to learn
about an aptitude which the animal’s corpulence was far from leading us
to suspect. Like his black colleague who enters our houses, the
Languedocian Scorpion is a skilled climber.
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?