293 



NORTH OF ENGLAND PSEUDOSCORPIONS. 



H. WALLIS KEW, F.Z.S. 

 London. 



PSEUDOSCORPIONS Were known in the South of England in 1665"" 

 — 42 years before the birth of Linnaeus — in Scotland in 1817,! 

 and in Ireland in 1836,1 yet it was not until 1884,1] ^^ f^"* ^^ 

 I have ascertained, that anything was published concerning" 

 them in the North of England. Even at the present time there 

 is a surprising scarcity of information as to their distribution in 

 the northern counties, where we know as yet but seven of the 

 twenty species which have been found in these islands. 



My object at present is to call attention to these Arachnids, 

 and to the want of information concerning them ; and to ask for 

 co-operation in a study not only of their distribution but also of 

 their life-histories and habits. It is surprising that a number 

 of naturalists state, in reply to inquiries, that they have never 

 seen these animals; and one gathers that without renewed refer- 

 ence to books they cannot even recall their appearance or any 

 facts concerning them. This is the more remarkable since some 

 of our species are common and apparently generally distributed, 

 occurring under stones, among dead leaves, and under bark of 

 trees ; sometimes, moreover, they are found in disused stables 

 and other abandoned places where animals or birds have been 

 kept, as well as in old birds'-nests and bee-hives, and even in 

 old houses among papers and objects of natural history. The 

 two outline figures accompanying this paper will give a general 

 idea of the appearance of the creatures ; and the key given 

 below will serve for the approximate determination of the 

 species. Reliance on the key alone, however, is not desirable — 

 it might be upset by the discovery of species new to Britain 

 — and thus before deciding on the identity of a specimen one 



* R. Hookf, ' Micrographia : or Some Physiological Descriptions of 

 Minute Bodies made by Magnifying- Glasses,' 1665, p. 207 ; PI. XXXIII., 

 Fig-. 2. 



tW. E. Leach, ^ On the Characters of the Genera of the Family 

 Scorpionidea, with Descriptions of the British Species of Chelifer and 

 Obisium,' Zoological Miscellany, III. (1817), p. 51. 



JR. Templeton, 'Catalogue of Irish Crustacea, Myriapoda, and Arach- 

 nida, selected from the Papers of the late John Templeton, Esq.,' Loudon's 

 Magazine of Natural History, IX. (1836), p. 14. 



I! O. P.-Cambridg-e, ' Pseudoscorpions New to Britain,' The Naturalist 

 X. (1884), p. 103. 

 1903 August I. 



