100 MR. H. W. KEW ON THE 
almost identical with that of Menge. Further, Bernard (18) had 
suggested that certain structures, which he believed himself to 
have discovered on the ventral face of abdominal somites V. to 
XI., were possibly the openings of spinning-glands. We have 
seen, however, that Menge was certainly wrong. With (27) has 
already stated that Supino was mistaken ; and the same remark 
applies to Bernard, whose misconception was ridiculed at the 
time by Hansen (20) and soon abandoned by the author himself. 
But there were other difficulties. Ducts had certainly been seen 
in the chelicere, but 16 was not clear that their openings had 
been fully made out; and Hansen had examined the supposed 
place of disemboguement in Obisiwm muscorwm Leach with 
results which he was unable to regard as satisfactory. He may 
perhaps have had before him an adult male in which the spinning- 
function had degenerated *. However this may be, he seems to 
have regarded Croneberg and Bertkau’s conclusions as justifiable ; : 
“but it ought to be sane! if the animals actually do spin 
with these organs.” So also With (27) has concluded that 
spinning is at least one of the functions of the chelicere ; but 
proof of it was still wished for. 
VE 
The required confirmation of the correctness of Croneberg and 
Bertkau’s conclusions is afforded by observations now recorded. 
The spinning is done by the chelicerze. ‘These appendages are of 
two segments: a hand prolonged into a fixed finger, and a 
movable finger articulated to the hand; and they are provided 
with special structures, of which one is entirely and another 
partially or entirely comb-like. The whole appendage is rela- 
tively small in Panctenodactyli, and relatively large in Hemi- 
ctenodactyli; and several differences in the special structures are 
characteristic of these main divisions. In all Panctenodactyli 
the movable finger is provided, on its outer margin just before the 
apex, with a small, almost transparent, more or less flexible, pro- 
jecting structure known as the galea. In Hemictenodactyli this 
structure is present or absent ; imal in its absence the hard chitin 
of the finger, in exactly the same position, is raised to form a 
small, more or less convex, laterally compressed tubercle. Crone- 
berg’s researches in Chelifer (Chernes)—repvesenting the first of 
these main divisions—showed that the ducts from the cephalo- 
thoracic glands passed into the hand of the chelicera, four or five 
into each, and thence into the movable finger, which they tra- 
versed to near the apex, where they entered the galea. Within 
the galea they distributed themselves into the small branches of 
that structure, and at the terminations of these branches they 
opened. Bertkau found in Obisiwm—representing the second 
main divis:ion—that the ducts similarly traversed the chelicere 
* Bertkau states of Obisiwm that the glands, which were well developed in all the 
females he examined, were absent in some of the males, though the ducts remained 
in the chelicere. 
