71 he was there before Coronado 



scorpion, and the horseshoe crab is not as nearly like anv 

 very ancient form as the scorpion in my storeroom is like 

 his Silurian ancestor. He may not be much to look at, Init 

 the least we can do is to regard him in the spirit of the 

 naturalist Sutherland when he contemplated the living 

 members of a tribe somewhat less ancient than the scor- 

 pions: "If the test of nobiUty is antiquity of family, then 

 the cockroach that hides behind the kitchen sink is the 

 true aristocrat. He does not date back merely to the three 

 brothers who came over in 1640 or to William the Con- 

 queror. Wherever there have been great epoch-making 

 movements of people he has been with them heart and 

 soul. . . . Since ever a ship turned a foamy furrow in the 

 sea he has been a passenger, not a paying one certainly 

 but still a passenger. But man himseK is but a creature 

 of the last twenty minutes or so compared with the cock- 

 roach, for, from its crevice by the kitchen sink, it can 

 point its antennae to the coal in the hod and say: 'When 

 that was being made my family was abeady well es- 

 tablished.' " Scorpions have never been as closely asso- 

 ciated with man as the cockroach, but they may not 

 consider that anything to be ashamed of and on the score 

 of antiquity they have a right to snub the cockroaches as 

 upstarts, relatively speaking at least. 



It may seem odd that they have hung on so long while 

 changing so little. It may seem even odder that they 

 should be found in deserts despite the fact that they are 

 so similar to the scorpions which had recently left the 

 water. But they do not insist upon its being dry and some 

 species will even tolerate a certain amount of cold. Though 

 there are none in New England or in the Great Lakes 

 region, they are found in the Alps and on our continent 



