Suicide of the Scorpion

Abstract

Apropos of the discussion on this point that has lately taken place in NATURE, will you allow me to say that I tried the experiment referred to therein a score of times at least during my long residence in India, and that I never saw the phenomenon so graphically delineated by Byron. My experiments were conducted in cholera and other camps, in the open air, often in the presence of others, and always under circumstances which could admit of no doubt. The conclusion I came to in the matter was that “the scorpion girt by fire” is too stupid or too cowardly a creature to “cure its pain by darting its sting”, or anything else, “into its desperate brain”. It either rushed blindly into the flames at once, and was then and there destroyed, or it wandered meaninglessly about the margin of “the circle”, recoiling nervously from the actual contact, or retiring as far as it could from the heat, to resume, after a short respite, its old manœuvres. I believe as the result of these inquiries that the impression or belief created by the fine imagery of the great poet is a myth and nothing more.