i 5 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The 'Tommies' along the railway sometimes make one of these 

 creatures fight with a scorpion. They place the combatants in some 

 slippery vessel so that they can not run out. The scorpion is nearly 

 always much the larger and heavier and has, in addition to its long 

 arms and powerful nippers, a deadly sting. Yet it not infrequently 

 happens that the Jacht Spinnekop comes off victorious, for it seizes 

 the scorpion in its terrible shears and tears a huge hole in it with a 

 quickness and force against which the scorpion is often powerless. 



I have a fine large one before me as I write, nearly three inches 

 long (from tip of jaws to end of abdomen), whose jaws alone are more 

 than a quarter of its length, and are, across in front of the eyes, the 

 broadest and solidest part of the whole creature. It is not poisonous; 

 it needs no poison with such terrible jaws. 



Passing from the most obvious feature of the Solifugge, one re- 

 marks several other unique characteristics. In spiders, there are, in 

 front of the first pair of legs, two feelers, one on each side of the head, 

 called palps, shorter than the legs, except in very rare instances ; in the 

 scorpion, these palps become long arms with powerful nippers at the 

 ends, and there are no delicate feelers; in the Solifugse, these palps 

 become long, stout and leg-like, with suckers at the ends for holding 

 cr climbing, while there is the very interesting further development 

 that the first pair of legs have ceased to be legs and have become thin, 

 delicate feelers. But there is yet another development, if possible 

 even more interesting still. Along the lower side of the last pair 

 of legs are little white oval plates, supported at regular intervals on 

 short stalks. These delicate little pedestals are sense organs of un- 

 known function; it is possible they are organs of scent, enabling this 

 great hunter to track his prey as he rushes along on the spoor. 



Of the SolifugaB I have found some ten or twelve kinds, some be- 

 longing to genera hitherto very rare in South Africa. Dcesia is the 

 rarest of the known genera here, and the local species is new. The 

 first male found was only the second of the genus in the South 

 African Museum collection. Dcesia is smallish and of a light, almost 

 transparent, yellowish tint, and nocturnal in its habits. By day one 

 finds them (if lucky enough to do so) under stones. Blossia, of which 

 the species found is also new, is smaller than Dcesia and of a delicate 

 pink color; of these I have found several females, but only one male. 

 Another form is a tiny black one, belonging to an undescribed species 

 and genus, and not more than a quarter of an inch long. 



But I pass on to the genus Solpuga, in which the large kinds, 

 diurnal and nocturnal, are found. When one first sees one of them 

 on the veld, especially the commonest (S. chelicornis) , one can hardly 

 believe it is not a beautiful karoo flower. This Solpuga is about two 



