3i8 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



scorpions, lizards, small mammals and birds. In one region 

 their chief food is said to be the scorpions. A small noctur- 

 nal genus in Colorado is reported to hunt bed-bugs. The 

 name given to the order, Solifugae, refers to the habit of 

 many genera of only appearing at night. Travellers in 

 Asia, for instance, only see them in their tents, racing over 

 their beds after dark has set in. Other genera, however, 

 show no such aversion to daylight. In Santiago they are 

 even said to run about the streets in broad daylight. It is 

 well for the inhabitants that they are measured in milli- 

 metres and not in feet or even inches, for anything more 

 terrible than the jaws of these creatures could hardly be 

 imaofined. 



These formidable and conspicuous limbs consist of a 

 pair of stout pincers arranged side by side, projecting 

 straight out in front of the animal, with sharp, curved 

 points, and toothed in various ways along the inner edges, 

 the whole outer and distal surface of the limb being thickly 

 covered by bristles. One writer speaks of them as the most 

 horrible jaws in the whole animal kingdom, eclipsing even 

 those of the tiger, the crocodile and the shark. 



The method of using these weapons has been described 

 as follows : seizing its prey the animal holds tight with one 

 jaw, while it drives the other deeper in, and then holds tight 

 with this one while the former is driven still further in, the 

 two working alternately in a sort of sawing motion cut 

 deeper and deeper into the victim, which is said often to be 

 " completely devoured". This reported complete devouring 

 of the prey is one of the many points that require investi- 

 gation. It is worth comparing with the fact that spiders 

 leave very little of their victims. The difficulty lies in the 

 fact that the Arachnids, as a rule, take in no solid food at 

 all, merely biting into the victim and then sucking all the 

 juices out of the wound, these being well strained before 

 entering the oesophagus. It has been suggested for the 

 spiders that, in the act of biting, glandular secretions may 

 cause the firmer tissues of their prey, which otherwise could 

 not be sucked in, to deliquesce. Somewhat the same may 

 be true for Galeodes, 



