438 JO URNAL, BOMB A Y NA TURAL HISTOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. IX. 



ON THE SPECIES OF GALEODID^ INHABITING 

 INDIA AND CEYLON. 



By E. I. Pocock, of the British Museum. 



( With Plates A. $ B.) 



{Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 2nd April, 1895.) 



The animals which form the subject of the present paper belong to 

 the group known to zoologists as the Arachnida, which contains, in 

 addition, the scorpions, spiders, ticks, and the like. For want of a 

 vernacular term to fit them, they are usually called spiders, but they 

 differ widely in many structural points from the true spiders, and con- 

 stitute in reality a very distinct order of the Arachnida. In the first 

 place being devoid of spinning glands they make no web of any kind, 

 and in the second place the cephalothorax and abdomen are divided 

 into a series of definite segments. There are also very many other 

 characters to distinguish the two groups, but it is not my purpose to 

 enter upon a discussion of them here, enough having been said to 

 enable any one readily to recognise a Galeodes from a true spider. 



In their distribution the Galeodidm much resemble scorpions. 

 They are found in S. Europe, over the whole of Africa, in Asia 

 Minor, Persia, Afghanistan, India, Ceylon, Siam, and Austro-Malaya ; 

 and in America they range from the southern United States in the north 

 to Chili in the south. So far as has been at present ascertained only two 

 genera exist in India s but neither of these has as yet been recorded from 

 Burma or any part of Further India, and only one of them appears 

 to extend into Ceylon. Moreover, it is probable that they are both 

 relatively recent immigrants into India, for they both form a prominent 

 part of the Mediterranean Arachnid fauna. These two genera 

 are Galeodes and Rhax. The former ranges from Morocco to Nubia, all 

 over Arabia, Asia Minor and Persia into Greece, S.Russia, Transcaspia, 

 Afghanistan, and thence into the Punjab and extends eastwards to the 

 neighbourhood of Calcutta and southwards into the presidency of 

 Madras. The range of Rhax covers that of Galeodes and appears 

 slightly to overlap it in N. Africa and in the Oriental Region. 

 For it extends from the Gambia to Masai- Land, and, as has been 

 already stated, into Ceylon. 



