ficial locality, but very often it is attended witii great difficulty. Hut apart from a 

 number of cases, showing a wide distribution of a species, which may be traced 

 back to importation from the one place to the other with more or less security, 

 statements remain about the occurrence of species at stations widely apart from 

 each other under such circumstances, that artificial transportation from the one 

 to the other locality seems to be excluded. It is known from of old that false- 

 scorpions use other animals like flies and beetles as means of transportation, 

 but that this habit should in any large degree have influence on their geographical 

 distribution, seems scarcely probable. 



As it should certainly be of great interest to get incontestable facts, showing 

 a very wide distribution of animals like Pseudoscorpions, it would without doubt 

 be worth the trouble to discuss the available statements of this kind; to do so 

 in this connection would not be possible, but I will set forth a few examples to 

 illustrate, how doubtful the value of such statements often is. Olpiiim lonijiuenter 

 Keys, has according to Simon (16. p. 519) been found on Hawaii, and according to 

 Pocock (53. p. 321) on Funafuti; but the specimens, which were examined by 

 these two able naturalists, do not belong to the Australian species, but belong to 

 new species of Garijpinus Dad. Simon has referred a species from Hawaii to Che- 

 lifer bifissiis Sim. from Sumatra, but is probably wrong (cf. below). Ch. scorpioides 

 Herrn, is distributed over a good part of Europe and is found in the open air, but 

 according to Daday (14. p. 477) it is very abundant in Friedricb-Wilhelmshafen in 

 German New-Guinea; the same author mentions Ch. nodalimaims Tom. from Dal- 

 matia. South America, Aschanti and Sumatra (11. p. 173); that the first of these 

 localities is probably wrong has been shown by Ellingsen (22. p. 5 cf. below). With 

 regard to these statements I am obliged to admit, that no further conclusion can 

 be drawn from them, because the descriptions of the above mentioned author are 

 so very insufficient, and because he does not seem to have realised how difficult 

 these animals are to identify. Only direct and careful reexamination can settle 

 the question. 



Many species of different other groups have often been regarded as mundane, 

 because the authors had not yet learned to use important characters. H. J. Hansen 

 has f. inst. shown, that many species of Paiiropiis Lubbock, Scutigerella Ryder and 

 Koenenia Grassi have a much more restricted distribution than previously thought. 

 The same naturalist writes about the distribution of species of Koenenia Grassi ; 

 "But I believe that most and perhaps all statements about this wide range of a 

 species are quite wrong, originating from insufficient knowledge of the species or 

 insufficient study of the specimens" (H. J. Hansen : On six species of Koenenia. 

 Entom. Tidsk. 1901, p. 217). The studies of the Indian fauna, published here, have 

 given me the same ideas as far as the Chelonethi are concerned, and made it clear 

 for me, in the first place that the number of species is very great, and in the 

 second place, that their range is rather limited, for it has occurred to me, that 

 almost all llie specimens, which I examined, were referable to ni'w species, the 



