Historical Intt'oduction 3 



considered these togethei" with Cyphophthahni and we have therefore thought that we might 

 usefully, at the conclusion of our paper, give a general rdsumd of the characters of all three 

 sub-orders and of the families of Op. Palpatores'. The morphology and mutual limitation 

 of these two sub-orders must be considered to be fiiirly well known through the investi- 

 gations of Thorell {a, 1876; and /; 1891), Simon {d, 1879), and Sorensen {a, 1873; cZ, 1884; 

 and e. 1886), and we refer therefore, on the whole, to the papers of these authors. But 

 our knowledge of Cyphophthahni in these respects is as yet very limited. Perhaps no better 

 evidence of this could be adduced than the fact that both the names which have been 

 given to this group, viz. Cyphophthahni and Anepignathi- are altogether misleading; but it 

 is not less manifest from the diagnostic list of all the genera and of most species then 

 known, which was compiled by Karsch in 1884 (6), because the disjunctive characters given 

 in that paper all depend on errors of observation on the part of some author or other, or 

 are merely sexual marks of distinction, whilst the new species added by Karsch himself 

 does not belong to this sub-order at all, but to the flxmily Troguloidse (probably the genus 

 Metopoctea) of the sub-order Palpatores. That this is the case has since been acknowledged 

 by Karsch himself and we can confirm it, Professor Dr. Dahl having had the kindness to give 

 us a sketch of the anterior part of the animal seen from above, as well as of the two hindmost 

 pairs of legs. 



We desire expressly to emphasize that in our opinion our predecessors, upon the whole, 

 can scarcely be blamed for their errors, because these are mostly due to their having had 

 but a few species before them, and our knowledge of these animals consequently being still 

 in its infancy. We have accordingly been in doubt whether we ought to indicate in the 

 general part of our paper in what respects we differ from our predecessors. We have decided 

 to do so only in order to give a guarantee that we have not omitted to consider the views of 

 earlier writers. 



Whilst the interior structure of Palpatores and Laniatores is tolerably well known, very 

 little information on this subject has been hitherto available with regard to C^i^hophthalmi, 

 all of it contributed by Joseph (a and c). We have therefore thought it worth while to 

 communicate what we have been able to ascertain concerning the inner structure, in spite 

 of its incompleteness. 



When Joseph described Cyphophthahmis (Siro) diiricorius, he made it the type of a 

 separate family which he called Cyphophthalmida. In this respect his judgment has proved 

 entirely correct, but the characters which he proposed for this family did not really contain 

 any justification of it excepting the statement: " Partium genitalium orificium...patet " or, as 

 it is expressed in the specific diagnosis, "partium genitalium fem. orificio primi arcus abdomi- 

 nalis apice prominente paululo obtecto " ; because, as we shall show below, this feature really 

 constitutes a character of the sub-order. For this reason Sorensen (a), who did not at that 

 time know any representative of the group, declined in 1873 to acknowledge the family as 

 such, nor had Simon (a) been induced to do so in 1872, referring, as he did, Cyphophthalmus 

 {Siro, Purasiro nobis) corsicus to the fiimily Troguloida- of the sub-order Palpatores. Cambridge, 

 on the contrary, accepted the fiimily without comment, and Thorell did so (a, p. 468) pointing 



' One of us (W. Sorensen) has for some years been - I.e. without clypeus and labrum (laminie supramaxil- 



engaged in a monograph of Laniatores. lares Thor.). 



