It was well for me that I always had this auxiliary establishment before my eyes. On the 22nd of July, at six o’clock in the morning, raising the cardboard screen, I found a mother beneath it, with her little ones clustering on her back like a sort of white cloak. I experienced one of those moments of sweet contentment which, at intervals, reward the long-suffering observer. For the first time I had before my eyes the fine spectacle of the Scorpioness clad in her young. The delivery was quite recent: it must have taken place during the night, for, on the previous evening, the mother was naked.
Further successes awaited me: on the next day, a second mother is whitened with her brood: the day after that, two others at a time are in the same condition. That makes [[163]]four. It is more than my ambition hoped for. With four families of Scorpions and a few quiet days before me, we may find some pleasure in life.
All the more so as fortune loads me with her favours. Ever since the first discovery in the jars, I have been thinking of the glass jars and asking myself whether the Languedocian Scorpion might not be as forward as her black sister. Let us make haste and see.
I turn over the twenty-five tiles. A glorious success! I feel one of those hot waves of enthusiasm with which I was familiar at the age of twenty rush through my old veins. Under three out of the total number of tiles, I find a mother laden with her family. One has young that are already quite of a fair size, about a week old, as my subsequent observations informed me; the two others have borne their children recently, during the recent night, as is proved by certain remnants jealously guarded under the paunch. We shall see presently what these remnants represent.
July runs to an end, August and September pass and nothing more occurs to swell my collection. The period of the family, therefore, [[164]]for both Scorpions is the second fortnight in July. From that time onwards everything is finished. And yet, among my guests in the black cage, there are still some females as big and fat as those from whom I have obtained progeny. I reckoned on these too for an increase in the population; all the appearances authorized me to do so. Winter comes and none of them has answered my expectations. The business, which seemed close at hand, has been put off to next year: a fresh proof of long gestation, very singular in the case of an animal of a lower order.
I transfer each mother and her product, separately, into medium-sized receptacles, which facilitate conscientious observation. At the early hour of my visit, those brought to bed during the night have still a part of the brood sheltered under their bellies. Pushing the mother aside with a straw, I discover, amid the heap of young not yet hoisted on the maternal back, objects that utterly upset all that the books have taught me on this subject. The Scorpions, they say are viviparous. The scientific expression lacks exactitude: the young do not first see [[165]]the light in the shape with which we are familiar.
And this must be so. How would you have the outstretched claws, the sprawling legs, the curled-up tails make their way through the maternal passages? The cumberous little animal could never pass through the narrow outlets. It must needs enter the world packed up and sparing of space.
The remnants found under the mothers, in fact, show me eggs, real eggs, similar, or very nearly, to those which dissection extracts from the ovaries at an advanced stage of pregnancy. The little animal, economically compressed to the dimensions of a grain of rice, has its tail laid along its belly, its claws flattened against its chest, its legs pressed to its sides, so that the small easily gliding oval mass presents not the slightest protuberance. On the forehead, dots of an intense black mark the eyes. The tiny insect floats in a drop of transparent moisture, which is for the moment its world, its atmosphere, contained by a pellicle of exquisite delicacy.
These objects are really eggs. There were thirty or forty of them, at first, in the Languedocian Scorpion’s litter; not quite [[166]]so many in the Black Scorpion’s. Intervening too late in the nocturnal confinement, I am present at the finish. The little that remains, however, is sufficient to convince me. The Scorpion is in reality oviparous; only, her eggs hatch very speedily and the liberation of the young follows very soon after the laying.
Now how does this liberation take place? I enjoy the remarkable privilege of witnessing it. I see the mother with the points of her mandibles delicately seizing, tearing, peeling off and lastly swallowing the membrane of the egg. She strips her new-born offspring with the fastidious care and fondness of the Sheep and the Cat eating the fœtal wrappers. Not a scratch on that scarce-formed flesh, not a limb strained, in spite of the clumsiness of the tool employed.