The black American scorpion--whose bite is more dreaded by the Negroes than even the snake's--may have been easily brought by ship in luggage or in cargo.

But the Fer-de-lance, whose nearest home is in Guiana, is not likely to have come on board ship.

It is difficult to believe that he travelled northward by land at the epoch--if such a one there ever was--when these islands were joined to South America: for if so, he would surely be found in St. Vincent, in Grenada, and most surely of all in Trinidad.

So far from that being the case, he will not live, it is said, in St. Vincent.

For (so goes the story) during the Carib war of 1795-96, the savages imported Fer-de-lances from St.Lucia or Martinique, and turned them loose, in hopes of their destroying the white men: but they did not breed, dwindled away, and were soon extinct.