which lie the delicate vessels that
secrete the poison.

In default of a poison jar which I would have placed on one side and
drawn upon at my convenience, I detach the last segment, forming
the base of the sting. I obtain it from a dead and already withered
scorpion. A watch glass serves as a basin. Here, I tear and crush the
piece in a few drops of water and leave it to steep for four-and-twenty
hours. The result is the liquid which I propose to use for the
inoculation. If any poison remained in my animal's caudal gourd, there
must be at least some traces of it in the infusion in the watch glass.

My hypodermic syringe is of the simplest. It consists of a little glass
tube, tapering sharply at one end. By drawing in my breath, I fill it
with the liquid to be tested; I expel the contents by blowing. Its point
is almost as fine as a hair and enables me to regulate the dose to
the degree which I want. A cubic millimeter is the usual charge. The
injection has to be made at parts that are generally covered with horn.
So as not to break the point of my fragile instrument, I prepare the
way with a needle, with which I prick the victim at the spot required. I
insert the tip of the loaded injector in the hole thus made and I blow.
The thing is done in a moment, very neatly and in an orthodox fashion,
favorable to delicate experiments. I am delighted with my modest
apparatus.

I am equally delighted with the results. The scorpion himself, when
wounding with his sting, in which the poison is not diluted as mine is
in the watch glass, would not produce effects like those of my pricks.
Here is something more brutal, producing more convulsion in the
sufferer. The virus of my contriving excels the scorpion's.

The test is several times repeated, always with the same mixture, which,
drying up by spontaneous evaporation, then made to serve again by
the addition of a few drops of water, once more drained and once more
moistened, does duty for an indefinite length of time. Instead of
abating, the virulence increases. Moreover, the corpses of the
insects operated upon undergo a curious change, unknown in my earlier
observations. Then the suspicion comes to me that the actual poison of
the scorpion does not enter into the matter at all. What I obtain with
the end joint of the tail, with the gland at the base of the sting, I
ought to obtain with any other part of the animal.

I crush in a few drops of water a joint of the tail taken f