55 



WATER-BEARS, OR TARDIGRADA. 



By James Murray. 

 (Communicated by D. J. Scourjirtd, March loth, 1907.) 



Plate 7. 



It has been suggested to me by Mr. Scourfield that a short 

 account of the Tardigrada might not be without interest to 

 members of the Quekett Club, and might be a means of inducing 

 some to join the small body of workers in this long-neglected 

 field. As I owe my first introduction to this fascinating group to 

 Mr. Scourfield, I have taken his hint, and tried to give an 

 account of the Water-bears which would be sufficient intro- 

 duction to the systematic study of the species, while yet no more 

 technical than was inevitable. 



At the time when I first met a Water-bear, now some five 

 years ago, and made some sketches of the strange and unknown 

 animal, I was fortunate in making the acquaintance of Mr. 

 Scourfield, who told me to what class the beast belonged. He 

 also informed me that the species I had drawn was unknown 

 in Britain, and that, indeed, Britain was practically an unex- 

 plored country, as far as Tardigrada were concerned. 



It is an indication of the total neglect of the group up to that 

 time that in those five years the Lake Survey has found about 

 forty species in Scotland, and that many of them are very com- 

 mon. I have since learned, from an early edition of Pritchard (26) 

 that some Tardigrada had been found in Scotland not very long 

 after the first published reference to the group, and that 

 shortly before that date (1834) a species had been found in 

 the south of England. 



What these bears may have been I cannot learn, as I have 

 been unable to trace the original record. In any case, it is 

 unlikely that the species could be recognised, as it was only in 

 that same year, 1834, that the first nearly adequate description 

 of a Tardigrade was given by Schultze (40). 



So common are Water-bears that it is surprising that not one 



