THE FALSE-SCORPIONS OF SCOTLAND 31 



Chthonius rayi, L. Koch, 1873. 



The first Scottish record of Ch. rayi is from Oban, where Mr. 

 \Vm. Evans found a specimen in April 1894. Seven years later, 

 April 27, 1901, he took the next Scottish specimens, six in number, 

 at Kincardine-on-Forth under pieces of wood on the banks of a 

 muddy ditch. One of these he gave me, in the hope that I might 

 procure the species on the south side of the Forth at Bo'ness, where 

 I was then stationed; and on June 24 I found a very immature 

 specimen that had apparently just entered on a free life among 

 some wet loose earth in a wood near Dykenook, Kinneil. I took 

 my first adult specimens on May 16, 1902, under stones near 

 Dalgety heronry in Fife, and since that date I have taken the 

 creature quite commonly on the Fife shore. 



Our present knowledge indicates that on the east coast this 

 species is widely distributed along both shores of the Forth, and 

 is found also north of Fife Ness in the " Tay " area, and that on 

 the west it has a great stronghold at Balmacara in Ross-shire where 

 about two hundred specimens were taken in the autumn of 1906 

 and haunts in Argyll and Kirkcudbright. 



Chthonius rayi, in my experience in Scotland, has mainly a 

 maritime distribution, occurring under stones and on the sandy 

 soil at high-water mark, as well as in the shore woodlands. The 

 most likely spots in which to find it are on the under surfaces 

 of stones which lie along the margin between the shore and the 

 adjoining fields or plantations ; in such localities it is often found 

 associated with Chernes dubius, and occasionally with O. muscontin, 

 and exceptionally with /. cambridgii. 



The only inland record I have in Scotland is that of one 

 obtained near Dalbeattie by Aird Whyte. In this connection, 

 however, Mr. Wallis Kew, who considers Ch. rayi the commonest 

 False-scorpion in England, says that he has found it in suitable places 

 wherever he has searched for it that is, in England and he believes 

 it to be as common inland as near the coast. That Ch. rayi will 

 yet be proved to be a common species inland in Scotland also is 

 hinted at by its present occurrence in haunts that have no immediate 

 connection with the sea. For, like its congener, Ch. tetrachelatus, 

 it is an attendant on cultivation, and lives in conservatories and in 

 farm steadings as well as in the open woodland or hillside. George 

 Barbour and I have taken it in a tomato-frame and in a conservatory 

 attached to Kirkmay House, Crail ; Aird and Robert Whyte have 

 procured it in the hothouses of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, 

 and I have obtained it in the stackyard of Newhouse Farm, 

 Dunbar. 



In Scotland Ch. rayi has not been detected on trees, but in 

 Brittany, where the species abounds everywhere, I found one under 



