/'.I 



I. THE ORDER OPILIONES, PARTICULARLY THE SUB-ORDER 



CYPHOPHTHALML 



A. Historical Introduction. 



It must be admitted that our knowledge of Cyphophthalmi has been hitherto very 

 limited, but it is long since the earliest known representative of this sub-order was first 

 described. It was Latreille who in 1797 {a. p. 18.5) briefly characterised the genus /SjVo ; 

 in 1804 he named the species, which he had discovered, 8. rubens (b, p. 329), and in 1806 

 he gave a tolerably good figure of the animal (c, PI. VI., fig. 2). In the two last-named works 

 he established the family Phalangita for the genera Galeodes Oliv., Phalangium Linn., Trogulus 

 Latr., and Siro Latr. In 1833 Sundewall excluded the genus Siro from his order Opiliones 

 to which he otherwise gave the same limits as it has to-day. He placed Siro — which he 

 certainly did not know himself — in his family Galeodides (p. 33) which he placed in his order 

 Solpugae together with the families, as he termed them, Phrynides {Phrynus and Thelyphonus), 

 Scoqjionides and Obisides, an arrangement whereby his orders were rendered very unequal in 

 value. In 1839 C. L. Koch (6, p. 7) proposed the family Sironides for the genus »Sim-o, with 

 which, however, he was not himself acquainted, and he placed this new family in his order 

 SolpugEe, which comprised not only the families Opilionides, Trogulides, Gonyleptides and 

 Cosmetides (which all belong to the order Opiliones), but also the family Galeodides. Although 

 Koch entitled his paper " Uebersicht des Arachnidensystems," he did not set forth the characters 

 either of the order or of the six families belonging to it, excepting Gonyleptides and Cosmetides. 

 Whilst on this occasion he had closely followed Latreille he made in 1850 (c, pp. 9.5 — 104) this 

 alteration, that though he otherwise preserved the order Solpuga? with the limits he had formerly 

 assigned to it, he excluded the genus Siro, which does not appear at all in his system. 

 In introducing this change he was obviously influenced by P. Gervais who in 1844 (a, p. 95) 

 had said of Siro : " Celui-ci est cependant bien un Acarien du genre Gamasus, Latr., et le 

 S. rubens nous parait different des Phalangides." Unfortunate as this statement was, it was 

 not inexcusable, because the figure of Latreille mentioned above was not so well executed 

 that a person unacquainted with the animal itself could see that it did not represent one 

 of the Acari, to which group Sironoidaj must really be said to bear a certain resemblance in 

 their general appearance. Nor was Latreille himself without responsibility in the matter, as we 

 see that in 1829 {d, p. 282) he had refen-ed to the genus Siro Acarus crassipes Herm., which had 

 been so excellently figured by Hermann that no one could be in doubt alxmt its being an Acarid. 



Latreille had found Siro rubens several times in France ; but it was only after the 

 lapse of 71 years that an animal of this group was again discovered ; this time near and 

 in the Lueger Cave in Austria by G. Joseph, who described (a and b) the new species as 

 forming a new genus under the name of Cyphophthalnuis duricorius, although it is really 

 a species of Siro. This mistake is easily explained by the fact that it would not easily 

 occur to him to look for Latreille's Siro, a forgotten genus which at that time was not 



s. 1 



< 



u^ 



