" WIND-SCORPIONS." 325 



few brief notes. Every one who works at them deplores 

 the scantiness of our knowledge. While the Spiders hang 

 out their marvellous webs on every bush, and the Scorpion's 

 sting is a household word, Galeodes has suffered for lack of 

 sufficient advertisement. It is one of the objects of this 

 paper to press home the claims of this family to the 

 attention of naturalists. The collections, even in our 

 largest museums, are very small, and reliable observations 

 on the living animal are scanty in the extreme, and yet I 

 think it will be admitted by my readers that these Arach- 

 nids rival both the Spiders and the Scorpions in interest.^ 



But even if our knowledge of the various forms, and 

 the habits of life of the Galeodidse were far more complete 

 than they are we should still not be satisfied. We can no 

 longer stop at admiration and minute description of existing 

 forms alone. It is now generally recognised that the most 

 stationary of organisms are not really stationary, but are 

 all plastic and variable. They change as the environment 

 changes, responding with exquisite sensitiveness to any 

 alteration in the impact of their material surroundings. Im- 

 portant, perhaps pre-eminent, amongst these varying factors 

 must be reckoned the food supply. It is a firm conviction 

 of the present writer that no other factor has played so 

 large a part in bringing about the multitudinous forms of 

 animal life as the acquirement of new methods of feeding. 

 The bearing of this upon the origin of the Arachnida will 

 be explained more in detail in what follows. 



According to the modern view, the Scorpions with 

 all their many though, comparatively speaking, slight 

 variations (for the Scorpion ranks high among the more 

 stationary forms, having varied but little from the type of 

 its Silurian ancestors) represent so many plastic waves 

 which have radiated out from some centre, changing as 



^ I should like to add that the death of a brilliant young American 

 naturalist, J. Duncan Putnam, at the early age of twenty-six deprived this 

 family of an enthusiastic advocate. Putnam, on his first acquaintance with 

 them was fascinated by them, and began to investigate them systematically. 

 Among other studies, he compiled a list of 224 treatises and references in 

 the literature (up to 1 881, the date of his death) dealing with these animals; 

 of this number hardly 10 per cent, are original observations. 



