146 Prof. J. Wood-Mason's Morpliuhxjical Notes 



wards, comes into apposition with the papilla-bearing pro- 

 cess oftlie peduncle. 



In an Indian species of Lepisma the antenna are fur- 

 nished, at the extremity of their two-jointed peduncle, 

 with a minute movably-articulated appendage, exactly cor- 

 responding in position to the papilla in Macldlis, and as 

 firmly chitinized as the basal joint of the flagellum. 



Let us see what light lower, that is to say, less modified, 

 air-breathing arthropods throw upon the nature of these 

 rudiments in the Lepismatidoi. 



It will, doubtless, be in the recollection of many of the 

 members that Sir John Lubbock exhibited at the November 

 Meeting of this Society, in 1866, and shortly afterwards 

 very fully and carefuUy described in the ' Transactions of 

 the Linnajan Society of London,' a remarkable addition to 

 the fauna of these islands in a new form of Myriopoda, 

 the most striking morphological feature of which un- 

 doubtedly is the possession by it of biramous antennas. 

 In Pauropus, as this curious little creature is named, in 

 allusion to the paucity of its locomotor pairs of members, 

 the two antennary branches, one supporting one and the 

 other two many-jointed flagclla, are themselves supported 

 upon a peduncle of four joints — a number which has, pro- 

 bably, resulted from the secondary segmentation of two 

 primitive joints, as, in fact, is indicated in Lubbock's 

 figure of a larval stage, though nothing is said about the 

 number of the joints in the accompanying text. 



Sir John Lubbock did not fail to remark the singularly 

 close resemblance which the antennas of Pauropus bear to 

 those of many Crustacea ; " in their bifid character, and 

 in the possession of long, jointed appendages," they " offer," 

 he says, •' peculiarities which can be found, so far as I am 

 aware, among no other terrestrial Articulata, and which 

 remind us strongly of the types presented by the antennas 

 of certain Crustacea;" and other writers, such as Rolleston, 

 have recognized in them a peculiarity by which " a very 

 distinct affinity is shown to exist between Myriopoda and 

 Crustacea." 



If for the movable appendage present in the Indian 

 Lepisma, and for the reduced representative of it in 

 Machills, were to be substituted a fully-formed flagellum, 

 in other Avords, if these rudimentary structures were re- 

 stored to what I believe to have been their pristine condi- 

 tion, it is obvious that we should then have in each case 

 antenuiB in all essential particulars like those of Pauropus, 

 or like the antennas i:)roper (III) of such a Crustacean as 



