THE ANNALS 

 MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY 



[FOUUni SKKIKS.] 

 No. 105. SEPT?:MBEK 1870. 



XVIII. — The Development of the Oya o/'Chthonius in the Body 

 of the Mother^ and the Formation of the Blastoderm. By 

 Anton Sticckeii *. 



The investigation of the first stages of development of the 

 ova of C'hfh(>niiiff\ possesses a much greater interest than 

 would be .supposed Irom what has hitherto been published 

 upon it ; for, except the memoir on the developmental his- 

 tory oi Chelifer published by Mctschnikoff J in the year 1871, 

 I can cite no other work containing any details of the embry- 

 ology of the Chernetidjp. But as MetschnikofF only had 

 scanty materials, the first stages of development observed by 

 him, so far as they relate to the formation of the deutoplas- 

 matic nutritive vitellus and the blastoderm, are so briefly de- 

 scribed, that his work {as, indeed, he himself remarks §) remains 

 very imperfect in this respect. I was fortunate enough to 

 be able to obtain a great number of egg-bearing females of 

 Chthonins, and thus had the op])ortunity of thoroughly inves- 

 tigating the first phases of those ova which are still in the 

 ovary and therefore had to be obtained from the body of the 

 mother by pre})ai-ation ; but as I had at the same time brought 

 up a number of other females in captivity, I was placed in the 

 favourable position of being able to examine simultaneously and 



• Translated bv VV. S. Dallas, F.L.S., from a sepai-ate impression of the 

 memoir published in the ' Sitzungsberichte der konigl. bohm. Gesellsch. 

 der VViss.' ISTC), Heft 3. 



t Vhthonius,^. genus nf the order f'hemetidne, family Obisinre ; Chdifer, 

 also a genus of Cliernetidfr, of the family Cheliferinte. 



X Zeit.schrift fur wis*. Zool. Rd. xxi. (1871 ) pp. 513-520, pis. 38 & 39. 



§ MetschnikofF, I.e. p. 514. 

 Ann. (f- }[ag. X. Hist. Ser. 4. Vol. xviii. 14 



