296 



NA TURE 



[Jan. 29, 1885 



first Palaeozoic scorpion which came to light was described 

 by Count Sternberg, in 1835, from a specimen obtained 

 by him from the coal-formation of Chomle, near Radnitz, 

 in Bohemia, which, in 1836, was named Cycloptlial- 

 mus senior by Corda. 1 Three years later Corda gave 

 an account of another scorpion, from the same locality, 

 under the name of Microlabis. From that time till 1 866 

 these were the only Palaeozoic scorpions known, but in 

 the latter year Messrs. Meek and Worthen described two 

 new genera from the Coal-measures of Mazon Creek, 

 Morris Grundy County, Illinois, under the names of 

 Eoscorpius and Mazonia respectively. 2 In 1873 ^ r - 

 Henry Woodward showed that scorpion remains, refer- 

 able to the genus Eoscorpius, occur both in the Coal- 

 measures of England and in the Carboniferous Limestone 

 series of Scotland. 3 In 1SS1 the present writer had the 

 privilege of studying and describing a large suite of scor- 

 pion remains belonging to the Geological Survey of 

 Scotland, and obtained by their officers from the lowest 



Carboniferous rocks of the Scottish Border. The results 

 were published in the Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh, where several species belonging to the 

 genus Eoscorpius were described and figured. 4 In 

 that paper the following conclusion was announced : — 

 " Although there seems to be sufficient reason to sepa- 

 rate the genus {Eoscorpius) from any recent one, these 

 ancient scorpions appear not to differ in any essential 

 character from those now living. As far as the horny 

 test, the only part now preserved to us, is concerned, they 

 were as highly organised and specialised towards the 

 beginning of the Carboniferous period as their descend- 

 ants at the present day. It is unfortunate on that ac- 

 count that Messrs. Meek and Worthen should have 

 chosen the name Eoscorpius, for the dawn of the scor- 

 pion family must have been at a much earlier period, and 

 we may hope that their remains will yet turn up in the 

 Devonian and Silurian plant-beds when these come to be 

 thoroughly searched.'' The subsequent study of a much 



finer collection from the same rocks has fully confirmed 

 the conclusion as to the essential identity of structure 

 between the living and the Palaeozoic forms. The hope 

 also expressed in the passage just cited has now been 

 realised by the discovery of scorpions in the Upper 

 Silurian beds of Scotland and Sweden, in the former by 

 Dr. Hunter of Carluke, who obtained one from Lesma- 

 hagow in Lanarkshire in June 1883, and in the latter by 

 Prof. Gustav Lindstrom, of the Swedish Academy of 

 Sciences, Stockholm, who got his last summer (1884) from 

 Wisby in the Swedish Island of Gothland. Prof. Lind- 

 strom shows that his was a land animal and a true air- 

 breather, and though of a more lowly type than the Car- 



1 Corda. in Bolimiscken Verhandlungen, 1836, and Wiegmann*s Archiv . 

 1836, vol. ii. p. 360. Figured in the Transactions of the Bohemian Museum. 



2 American Journal of Science, 2nd series, vol. xlv. p. 25. "Geological 

 Survey of Illinois," vol. iii. pp. 563-565. 



3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol.xxxii. p. 57. 



boniferous and recent scorpions, was yet to be placed 

 among the members of that ancient family. Writing to 

 M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards on November 24, 1884, he 

 says : — 



" The specimen is in sufficiently good preservation, and 

 shows the chitinous brown or yellowish brown cuticle, 

 very thin, compressed and corrugated by the pressure of 

 the superposed layers. We can distinguish the cephalo- 

 thorax, the abdomen, with saven dorsal laminae, and the 

 tail, consisting of six segments or rings, the last narrow- 

 ing and sharpening into the venomous dart. The sculp- 

 ture of the surface, consisting of tubercles and longi- 

 tudinal keels, entirely corresponds with that of recent 

 scorpions. One of the stigmata on the right is visible, 

 and clearly demonstrates that it must have belonged to 



* Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxx. pp. 397- 

 4.2, Plates XXII., XXIII. 



