604 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1884. 



could all be distinguished. The surface of the back was sculptured by 

 tubercles and longitudinal keels corresponding with those developed in 

 recent species. "One of the stigmata on the right is visible, and clearly 

 demonstrates that it must have belonged to an air-breathing animal, 

 and the whole organization indicates that it lived on dry land." "In 

 the conforuuition of tbis scorpion there is one feature of great impor- 

 tance, namely, four pairs of thoracic feet, large and pointed, resembling 

 the feet of the embryos of several other tracheates and animals like the 

 Campodea. This form of feet no longer exists in the fossil scorpions of 

 the Carboniferous formation, the appendices belonging to which resem- 

 ble those found in the scorpions of our own day." The form in question 

 was named by Professor Lindstrom Palceophoneus nuncius^ and is "the 

 most ancient ". of all known "land-animals." 



Some time before the description by Professor Lindstrom of this new 

 animal was published, Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, obtained a fossil scorpion 

 also from the Upper Silurian, but in Scottish Lanarkshire, in June, 1883. 

 It was not, however, until Professor Lindstrom's description of the 

 Swedish find appeared that Dr. Hunter recognized the importance of 

 his own discovery. " The rocks from which the Scottish example was ob- 

 tained are the well-known Upper Silurian beds of Dunside, Logan Water, 

 Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, which have yielded such a magnificent 

 suite of Eurypterids, and supplied a great part of the materials for Dr. 

 Woodward's work on the Merostomata. The animal in this specimen 

 is about an inch and a half long, and lies on its back on the stone. Its 

 exposed ventral surface shows almost every external organ that can be 

 seen in that i>ositiou, and in this way seems to supi^lemeut the evidence 

 supplied bylhe Swedish specimen. As in the northern individual, the 

 first and second pairs of appendages of the cephalothorax in the Scottish 

 example are chelate, but the palpi are not quite so robust. The walk- 

 ing limbs, though not so dumpy as in P. nuncius, also terminate each in 

 a single claw-like spike. The arrangement of the sternum shows a large 

 pentagonal plate (metasternite) against which the wedge-shaped coxae 

 of the fourth pair of walking-limbs abut. The coxse of the third pair 

 bound the pentagonal plate along its upper margins, and meet in the 

 mid line of the body, where they are firmly united. The coxse of the 

 first two pairs, as well as the bases of the palpi, are drawn aside from 

 the center line of the body, showing that, as in recent scorpions, these 

 alone were concerned in manducation, or rather the squeezing out of the 

 juices of the prey. From the circumstance of these being drawn aside, 

 the medial eyes are seen pressed up through the cuticle of the gullet, 

 and a fleshy labi um (camerostome) appears between the bases of the 

 chelicerse." 



The characteristics exhibited by these very old scorpions are such as 

 to separate them quite widely from any of the recent types, and although 

 evidently belonging to the same order, and thus related to the latter, 

 they indicate a peculiar family, the Palicophoueid^e. Doubtless renewed 



