KONGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDL. BAND. 21. n:0 9. 7 



The state of preservation is, in other respects, quite as perfect as could be desired, as 

 all the minute ornainentation and the sculpture of the surface are visible and entire. 

 The colour, which varies from a dark to a light brown, so nearly coincides with that 

 prevailing in the recent Scorpions, that it may be considered as the original one of 

 the animal. 



Owing to various hindrances no opportnnity was found to make this discovery 

 known before November the 12th 1884, when it was announced at the evening meet- 

 ing of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. A photograph, double the size of 

 the original, was sent abroad to several Museums and zoologists, after we had agreed 

 jointly to undertake this memoir and had named the animal Palceophonus nuncius. 

 This new species was first mentioned in print in the »Comptes Rendus de TAcadéraie 

 des Sciences» Paris 1884 Dec. 1 p. 984, in an artide »Sur un Scorpion du terrain Si- 

 lurien de Suéde. Extrait d'une lettre de M. G. Lindström ä M. Alphonse Milne- 

 Edwards». When Dr Hunter of Daleville House near Carluke in Scotland had received 

 the photograph, he at once wrote to one of us, stating that in the summer of 1883, 

 he had also discovered an Upper Silurian Scorpion, closely resembling the Gotland 

 specimen, in the beds of LesmahagOAv, and he announced his own discovery on the 

 same occasion when, according to the request of Lindström, he read a preliminary 

 notice on the Gotland Scorpion at the meeting of the Edinburgh Geological Society, 

 December the 18th 1884 '). 



This single find, isolated as it at first stood, gave us at once absolute certainty of the 

 former existence of land in the Silurian times, land, upon the surface of which natural 

 products from the animal and vegetable kingdoms must have thrived. It is true, that 

 long before, both in England^) and in Sweden, in Scania') and Gotland'^), as Avell as 

 in Bohemia °), in the uppermost Silurian beds indications of plants had been already 

 discovered, and were regarded as having grown on the y>ferra firma». But if these re- 

 mains are obscure, and their character as land-plants doubtful, there are other evi- 

 dences of the presence of land, in the nature of the marine strata. The sandstone beds 



1) See »Discovery of a Silurian Fossil Scorpion» in the »Glasgow Herald» Dec. 19, 1884, also in tlie »Scots- 

 man», Edinburgh. Dec. 19. — Other artides on the fossil Scorpion were published in the following period- 

 icals. »Ije plus ancien animal terrestre connu» in La Nature Dec. 20, 1884, p. 35, with a rough figure, 

 copied from the photograph. — »Le transformisme et M. Alph. Milne-Edwauds» par Dr Fauvelle, in 

 »L'Homme, Journal illustre des Sciences Anthropologiques» 1885 M 1, pp. 26 — 28. — »A Scorpion 

 from the Silurian Formation of Sweden» Ann. Mag. N. H. 5th Ser. vol. 15 p. 76, a translation of the 

 letter in Comptes Rendus with an additional note on Dr Huntek's previous discovery of a fossil Scorpion. — 

 »Ancient air-breathers by B. N. Peach» in Nature Jan. 29, 1885 p. 295 with a figure of the Scot- 

 tish Scor23ion and a oopy of the Frenoh figure of Palaeoph. nuncius. — »Discovery of Silurian Insects» in 

 »Science» Jan. 30, 1885 p. 97 with a new figure. — »On the recent discovery of the wing of a Cockroach 

 and two Scorpions in rocks of Silurian age» by Herbert Goss in »The Geol. Magazine» March 1885 p. 

 129 — 131. — »Sur un Scorpion du terrain silurien de Suéde» (Extrait d'une lettre etc), a reprint of the 

 letter in »Comptes Rendus», in »Annales des Sciences Naturelles», Zoologie et Paléont. Serie VI, Torne 

 17 JV? X 5 & 6, 1885. — »Les Scorpions e't leurs ancétres» par G. Capds in the »Magasin Pittoresque 

 M 6, 31 Mars 1885», pag. 96—98 with figure. 



-) Seed-vessels of Lycopodiaceae according to Sir Joseph Hooker. Qu. Journal Geol. Soc. vol. 17 p. 162. 



**) Plant remains from the uppermost sandstone of Bjersjölagård, regarded as land-plants. 



*) Obscure, rounded, leaf-Hke fossils on slabs of ripple-marked sandstone of Hoburg in Gotland. 



^) From the uppermost Silurian strata of Bohemia. Stue, who discovered them, regards them as Algas, 

 but others, as Schknk, as land-plants. 



