The Scorpion is an uncommunicative insect

The Scorpion is an uncommunicative insect, occult in his manners and unpleasant to deal with, so much so that his history, apart from the findings of anatomy, is reduced to little or nothing. The scalpel of the masters has made us acquainted with his organic structure; but, so far as I know, no observer has thought of interviewing him, with any sort of persistence, on the subject of his private habits. Ripped up, after a preliminary maceration in alcohol, he is very well-known indeed; acting within the domain of his instincts, he is hardly known at all. And yet none of the segmented animals were more deserving of a detailed biography. He has at all times struck the popular imagination, even to the point of being numbered among the signs of the zodiac. Fear made the gods, said Lucretius. Deified by terror, the Scorpion is glorified in the sky by a constellation and in the almanac by the symbol for the month of October. Let us try to make him speak.