PALEONTOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES, RECENT. 



637 



longer exists in the fossil scorpions of the car- 

 boniferous formation, the appendices belonging 

 to which resemble those found in the scorpions 

 of our own day." 



Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, had obtained anoth- 

 er fossil of a scorpion in June, 1883, from the 

 Upper Silurian beds of Dunside, Logan Water, 

 Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, of which 

 he, however, failed to publish a description be- 

 fore the account of the specimen of Prof. Lind- 

 strom had appeared. As described by Mr. 

 Peach, the animal in Dr. Hunter's specimen 

 " is about an inch and a half long, and lies on 

 its back on the stone. Its exposed ventral sur- 

 face shows almost every external organ that 

 can be seen in that position, and in this way 

 serves to supplement the evidence supplied by 

 the Swedish specimen. As in the northern in- 

 dividual, the first and second pair of append- 

 ages of the cephalo- thorax in the Scottish ex- 

 ample are chelate, but the palpi are not quite 

 so robust. The walking-limbs, though not 

 quite so dumpy as in Palceophoneus nuncius, 

 also terminate each in a single claw-like spike. 

 The arrangement of the sternum shows a large 

 pentagonal plate (metasternite), against which 

 the wedge-shaped coxae of the fourth pair of 

 walking-limbs abut. The coxae of the third 

 pair bound the pentagonal plate along its upper 

 margins, and meet in the mid-line of the body, 

 where they are firmly united. The coxae of 

 the first two pairs, as well as the bases of the 

 palpi, are drawn aside from the center line of 

 the body, showing that, as in recent scorpions, 

 these ;ilone are concerned in manducation, or 

 rather the squeezing out of the juices of the 

 prey. From the circumstance of these being 

 drawn aside, the medial eyes are seen pressed 

 up through the cuticle of the gullet, and a 

 fleshy labrum (camerostorne) appears between 

 the bases of the chelicera}. Behind the pen- 

 tagonal plate and the coxa3 of the hindmost 

 limbs there succeeds a space shaped like an in- 

 verted V, where the test is thin and wrinkled 

 in the line of the long axis of the body. It is 

 just along this line that the trunk of the abdo- 

 men most easily separates from the cephalo- 

 thorax in recent scorpions, and it is at once 

 apparent that the trunk in this case is as far 

 separated from the cephalo-thorax as it can 

 well be without being detached. Similar lon- 

 gitudinally wrinkled skin is seen to unite the 

 dorsal and vertical scutes up the whole right 

 side of the trunk. At the interior angle of the 

 inverted V there hangs downward a narrow 

 bifid operculum flanked on each side by the 

 combs, which have each a broad triangular 

 rachis set along its lower edge with the usual 

 tooth-like filaments. The combs almost hide 

 the first of the four ventral sclerites, which 

 bear the breathing apparatus in recent scorpi- 

 ons, notwithstanding which all four of these 

 exhibit on their right side undoubted slit-like 

 stigmata at the usual place. The fifth central 

 scute of the trunk suddenly contracts posteri- 

 orly, and to its narrow end is articulated a 



long tail of five joints and a poison-gland with 

 a sting. These joints are all constructed on 

 the same principle as those of recent scorpions, 

 and as the articular surfaces are more highly 

 faceted on the dorsal than on the ventral as- 

 pect (a portion of the tail lying sidewise, allow- 

 ing of these observations), there can be no 

 doubt that the animal was in the habit of car- 

 rying the tail over the head (so to speak), and 

 stinging in the same manner as its recent con- 

 geners." The above characters are shown in 

 the accompanying engraving (Fig. 1), on a scale 



FIG. 1. FOSSIL SCORPION, from the upper Silurian rocks 

 of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, found by Dr. 

 Hunter, Carluke. (Magnified two diameters.) 



about twice the natural size, from a drawing 

 taken by Mr. Peach. From it and from the 

 description it becomes apparent that the animal 

 was a true air-breather and a land-animal. 



The earliest fossil insects hitherto found were 

 some specimens discovered by Mr. S. H. Scud- 

 der in the Devonian strata of New Brunswick. 

 Very recently M. Charles Brongniart has de- 

 scribed a fossil impression of the wing of an 

 insect (Figs. 2 and 3) which was found by M. 

 Douville, professor in the Ecole des Mines, in 

 the Middle Silurian sandstone of Jurques (Cal- 

 vados). France. The specimen is imperfectly 

 preserved, but most of the nervation is dis- 

 tinguishable. The wing, which is about thir- 

 ty-five millimetres long, belonged to an insect 

 of the family of the Blattidce. The humeral 

 field is broad, and there can be perceived on 

 the specimen the upper humeral vein, the 

 lower humeral vein, bifurcated at its extrem- 

 ity ; the vitrean or median vein, also divided 



