Jan. 29, 1885] 



NA TURE 



297 



an air-breathing animal, and the whole organisation 

 indicates that it lived an dry land. In this scorpion, 

 then, which we have named the Palaophoneus nuncius, 

 we see the most ancient of land-animals. In the con- 

 formation of this scorpion there is one feature of great 

 importance, namely, four pairs of thoracic feet, large and 

 pointed, resembling the feet of the embryos of several 

 other tracheates and animals like the Campodea. This 

 form of feet no longer exists in the fossil scorpions of the 

 Carboniferous formation, the appendices belonging to 

 which resemble those found in the scorpions of our own 

 day." 



To Prof. Lindstrom is thus due the honour of first 

 announcing the discovery, and it was not till Dr. Hunter 

 had received a photograph of the Swedish specimen, 

 together with a preliminary notice' of his find from Prof. 

 Lindstrom, that he became fully aware of the importance 

 of his own discovery. On receipt of the photograph and 

 the notice. Dr. Hunter showed the Scottish specimen to 

 the pre -cut writer (December 1884), with whom he has 

 agreed to describe the geological and zoological aspects 

 of the find. 1 In the meantime, a short preliminary descrip- 

 tion for comparison with the Swedish animal may not be 

 out of place here. The rocks from which the Scottish 

 example was obtained are the well-known Upper Silurian 

 beds of Dunside, Logan Water, Lesmahagow, Lanark- 

 shire, which have yielded such a magnificent suite of 

 Eurypterids, and supplied a great part of the materials for 

 Dr. Henry Woodward's work on the Merosomata. The 

 animal in this specimen is about an inch and a half long, 

 and lies on its back on the stone. Its exposed ventral 

 surfai e 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 individual, the first and second pair of 

 appendages of the cephalo-thorax in the Scottish example 

 are chelate, but the palpi are not quite so robust. The 

 walking-limbs, though not so dumpy as in P. 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 coxa; 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 coxa; of the first two pairs, 

 as well as the bases of the palpi, are drawn aside from the 

 centre line of the body, showing that, as in recent 

 scorpions, these alone were 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 (camerostome) appears between the 

 of the chelicerae. 



Behind the pentagonal plate and the coxae of the 

 hindmost limbs there succeeds a space shaped like an 

 inverted 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 or abdomen 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 longitudinally-wrinkled skin is seen 

 to unite the dot sal and ventral scutes up the whole right 

 side of the trunk. At the interior angle of the inverted 

 V there hangs downwards 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 scorpions, notwithstanding which all 

 four of these exhibit on their right side undoubted slit- 



1 It has been 

 Histvy, p. 76, 

 1 )ie above <ta't 



ilys 



ed in the Annals and Magazine ofNatur, 



that the specimen was sent to me in 188 

 —Ben. N. Peach. 



like stigmata at the usual places. The fifth ventral scute 

 of the trunk suddenly contracts posteriorly, 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 facetted on the 

 dorsal than on the ventral aspect (a portion of the tail of 

 the specimen lying sideways allowing of these observa- 

 tions), there can be no doubt that the animal was 

 in the habit of carrying the tail over the head (so to 

 speak) and stinging in the same manner as its recent 

 congeners. 



The above characters are shown in the accompanying 

 woodcut (Fig. 2) on nearly the same scale as that of the 

 figure of the Swedish example, viz. about twice the natu- 

 ral size, taken from a drawing made by the writer. From 

 it and the description it becomes apparent that the animal 

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



The presence of the remains of these ancient murderers 



Fig. 2.— Fossil scorpion from the Upper Silurian rocks of Lesmahagow, 

 Lanarkshire, Scotland, found by Dr. Hunter, Carluke ; magnified two 

 diameters. 



in such old strata necessarily suggests the question, What 

 was the nature of their victims? As far as the Carbon- 

 iferous scorpions are concerned, we are acquainted with 

 several other arachnids, numerous hexapod insects, and 

 chilognathous myriapods, which might have formed their 

 prey. The Middle Devonian rocks of Canada have fur- 

 nished remains of dragon-flies, which were known as the 

 oldest land animals until the present writer showed, in 

 1882, that chilognathous myriapods were far from uncom- 

 mon in the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Forfarshire in 

 Scotland, 1 and the Gyrichnitcs of the Lower Devonian of 

 Gaspe are doubtless the casts of such animals.- It is but 

 a short step from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Scot- 

 land to the Upper Silurian. The lowest part of the 

 Lower Old Red Sandstone, which is a lake-formation, 

 may be represented elsewhere by marine strata, which 

 would undoubtedly be called Upper Silurian, and, in fact, 

 high up in the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Lanark- 

 shire, which contains Ccphalaspis, a band of shale occurs, 



1 Transactions of the Royal Physical Society, 1882, vol. vii. pp. 177-188, 

 PI. II. 



* Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. i. Pis. XI., xll. 



