ON THE ANATOMY AND EMBRYOLOGY OF THE 

 NERVOUS SYSTEM OF THE SCORPION. 1 



J. F. McCLENDON. 



Early in May, 1903, at the suggestion of Dr. William 

 Morton Wheeler, at that time professor of zoology in the Uni- 

 versity of Texas, I began collecting females and preserving 

 embryos of the scorpion here considered. I found the scorpions 

 under stones on certain hills covered with scrub oak, scrub cedar 

 or grass in the neighborhood of Austin, Texas. They prefer dry 

 areas with an abundance of broad, flat stones, or at least stones 

 lying loosely on the ground, under which they hide. The first 

 scorpions collected (May 13) contained eggs in early cleavage 

 stages, and the last scorpions taken that year, June 10, contained 

 embryos with pigment well developed in the eyes. The next 

 year the scorpions developed earlier, and by the first of June I 

 procured successive stages of the embryo up to the time of birth. 

 Most of the work was done at the University of Texas during 

 the session of 1903-04, under the direction of Dr. Thomas H. 

 Montgomery, professor of zoology. 



MATERIAL AND METHODS. 



The species of scorpion I worked on is that described and fig- 

 ured by R. J. Pocock in the Biologia Centrali Americana under 

 the name of Centrurioides vittatus Say. I sent some specimens 

 to Professor Kraepelin, and he identified them as Centrums in- 

 fainatus C. L. Koch. This is probably synonymous with 

 Scorpio carolinianus Palisot de Beauvois, and probably the spe- 

 cies Patten (1890) worked on, Butlnts carolinianus, as stated in 

 his paper. 



The embryos, either in the ovarian tubules or dissected out, 

 were fixed in Lee's picro-acetic, Kleinenberg's picro-sulphuric, or 

 Tower's alcohol-corrosive-aceto-nitric (Zool. Jalir. Anat. Ontog. 

 d. T/iiere, Vol. 17, heft 3, 1903). As all the embryos taken from 

 one mother are in the same stage of development it is convenient 



1 Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Texas, No. 60. 



38 



