THE FALSE-SCORPIONS OF SCOTLAND 157 



In their natural condition also the females are free while carrying 

 their mass of eggs or embryonic young. Moreover, on September 5, 

 1905, at Kilminning, I found one, a female, moving about with ten 

 young ones which had attained their definitive form, seated on the 

 under surface of her hind-body. She stood or walked with the 

 front of the fore-body almost touching the ground, and her emaciated 

 hind-body raised in a concave arch above the ground. The young 

 were seated with their heads outwards ; the outer young were 

 chnging to the inner, and one youngster wandered over the upper 

 surface of its parent. 



Cheiridium museopum (Leach), 18 17. 



This, the smallest of our British species, measuring just over 

 one millimetre in length, has its proper home in stables and hay-lofts, 

 where it occurs among the hay-seed as well as on pieces of wood and 

 stones covered with dust and spiders' webs ; it also lives in houses, 

 but its presence there is rarely suspected unless when it wanders 

 from the cracks of the furniture in which it passes its existence to 

 books, or to collections of dried plants or natural history objects. 



My introduction to this species came in quite an unexpected 

 fashion. AVhile busy writing a sermon in my room at Bankhead, 

 Bo'ness, on June 20, 1901, I noticed a little brownish-red speck on 

 the Bible that lay open before me, and was surprised to see that it 

 was a live specimen of the long-looked-for Book-scorpion. In its 

 movements it resembled other species previously known to me, 

 walking with its pedipalps held well forward, and altering their 

 position or retracting them on the slightest suspicion of danger. 

 Repeatedly I put my pencil in front of it, taking care, however, not 

 to touch it, and it always showed its sensitiveness to the presence of 

 the pencil point by drawing back its pedipalps, and at the same time 

 moving backwards. When I followed it up, the little creature con- 

 tinued to retreat before my pencil, of whose presence it seemed to 

 be quite conscious before actual contact took place. When I blew 

 on the creature, it drew its pincers quite close to its head, and 

 appeared then like a small speck of brownish-red dirt. 



Four years afterwards, almost to the very day, June 21, 1905, I 

 discovered that a large colony had been living unknown to me in 

 my own house in Cumberland Street, Edinburgh. Our kitchen 

 bunker had to be removed to allow of some repairs being effected 

 on the wall, and was judged so aged and decayed as to be unde- 

 serving a place in the house any longer ; it had been in the house 

 during the twenty-four years of our occupancy, and was probably 

 fifty years old at least. Before removing it to a cellar, I had pulled 

 off a plank that had i^verlapped the back of the bunker to prevent 

 articles falling down between it and the wall, and I instinctively 

 examined the under side of the plank. It was literally covered with 



