DUEL EXTRAORDINARY.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 569, 15 April 1876, Page 3

DUEL EXTRAORDINARY.

Mr Buckland tells the following story of a fight between a scorpion and a mouse. He says:— On carefully opening the box, I saw two scorpions sitting in it with their tails over their backs. They were divided from each other by a partition, and were very quiet, but on seeing the light they immediately began to move, so that I had to be careful not to let them escape into the room. Sending for a glass fish globe, 1 turned the box suddenly over, and with a tap at the bo*tora shook them into it. For a moment the scorpions remained quiet on the bottom ; then waking up they suddenly rushed at each other, and began fighting and wrestling claw to claw, like bulldogs. I had great trouble to separate them, and get one of them out of the globe. la the course of the morning it was announced that a mouse had been caught in a trap. I immediately thought of testing the poison of the scorpion upon the mouse. The reader must know that my scorpion is a little beast, with a body the size of a large black beetle. He has small legs on each side like the legs of a lobster, and also two hipping claws. At the end of the body is a tail nearly two inches long, consisting of a horny bag the shape of an apple pip, and armed with a brown coloured sting haying a curve like a bramble thorn. The point of the sting is exceedingly Bharp. The general | colour of the scorpion is a horrid looking ] waxy brown. The eyes of the scorpionlittle black shining points—are situated at the top of his head. When preparing to fight he carries his tail in a curve over his back and brandishes his sting with immense rapidity. He aims his blows directly forward, as a soldier gives a bayonet thrust. The scorpion was lying quietly at the bottom of the globe when I shook the mouse from the trap into it; but the sudden arrival of a stranger into his private apartments awoke him up directly. He hoisted his sting and began brandishing it about. The mouse shortly crossed his path ; the scorpion instantly lunged his sting into him. This in turn woke up the mouse, who began to jump up and down like a Jack in the box. When he became quiet, the scorpion then attacked the enemy, with his claws extended, like the pictures of the scorpion in the Signs of the Zodiac ; he made another shot at the mousp, but missed him, I then called "time" to give both combatants a rest. When the mouse had got his wind, I stirred up the scorpion once more; and, as the fancy say, "he came up smiling," The mouse during the interval had made up his mind that he would have to fight, and not strike his colours to a scorpion as he would to a cat. When, therefore the scorpion came within range, the mouse gave a squeak and bit him on the buck ; the scorpion at the same moment planted his sting well between the mouse's ears on the top of his head. The scorpion then tried to retreat, but could not, for one claw had got entangled in the fur of the

mouse. Then came one of the most ludi crotiH scenes I ever beheld. Mouse and scor pion closed, and both rolled over and over, like two cats fighting. The scorpion continued stabbing the mouse with his sting, his tail going with the velocity and swift spring of a needle in a sewing-machine, in fact, the scorpion had the mouse, as pugnacious schoolboys say, in chancery. The moment the scorpion tired, and the lounges of his tail became less frequent, the mouse got hold of the last joint of his adversary's tail with his jaw, and gave the sting a hard nip with his teeth (it was most interesting to notice that the mouse used its paw). The scorpion at once tried to beat a retreat, but he couldn't get away, as his claws were entangled in the fur. The mouse 'seized thia opportunity, and delibe rately bit two of the scorpion's side legs off. He then retired to the corner, and began to wash his face and comb his fur. T took out my watch to note how long it would be before the poison of the scorpion took effect. I waited minute after minute and nothing happened ; the mouse, seemei. a little tired, and that was all. "When about ten minutes had passed I shook the ecorpion up to the place where the mouse was sitting. The scorpion was a nlucky arochnoid, for he tried to come up to the scratch once more ; but as a ship is disabled when she ha<* lost her mainmast by a el ot, so seorpio fornixdolosiis, as Horace call him, was crippled for further encounter. He tried to hoist his sting, but the bite from the mouse had injured his tail, so that he could not strike straight with it, and it had lost itß spring from the wound. Seeing that the scorpion was " lying under bare poles," the mouse sat himself down and began deliberately to eat the scorpion's legs up one after the other.