208 [June 16, 
Packard.] 
gon, Meek and Worthen, and lately by Scudder, were numerous as far 
back as the Carboniferous period ; the Chilopods are the later produc- 
tions ; perhaps not older than the Tertiary period, since Munster’s Geophi- 
lus prawus is a doubtful form. 
In this connection, reference should be made to the singular fossil, Pa- 
leocampa, from the Carboniferous formation of Illinois, originally de- 
scribed as a caterpillar-like form by Meek and Worthen, and lately 
claimed to be a Myriopod by Mr. Scudder,* who proposes for the hypo- 
thetical groups, of which he considers it as the type, the name, Protosyn- 
gnatha. Tt seems to us, after a careful reading of Mr. Scudder’s article, 
that this obscure fossil presents no features really peculiar to the Myrio- 
pods; but that there are as good or better reasons for regarding it as the 
hairy larva of some Carboniferous neuropterous insect. Mr. Scudder de- 
scribes it substantially thus: ‘It is a caterpillar like, segmented creature, 
three or four centimeters long, composed of ten similar and equal seg- 
ments, besides a small head; each of the segments, excepting the head, 
bears a single pair of stout, clumsy, subfusiform, bluntly-pointed legs, as 
long as the width of the body, and apparently composed of several equal 
joints. Each segment also bears four cylindrical but spreading bunches 
of very densely packed, stiff, slender, bluntly tipped, rod-like spines, a 
little longer than the legs. The bunches are seated on mammille and 
arranged in dorsopleural and lateral rows,’’ 
We do not recognize in this description any characters of a myriopodous 
nature ; on the contrary, in what is said about the head, ‘‘composed of only 
a single apparent segment’’ (p. 165), and of the legs in the above descrip- 
tion, and again on p. 165, where it is remarked: ‘‘ The legs were different, 
in form [from modern Chilopoda], but their poor preservation in the only 
specimen in which they have been seen, prevents anything more than the 
mere statement of the following difference ; while the legs of Chilopoda 
are invariably horny, slender, adapted to wide extension and rapid move- 
ment, those of Paleocampa are fleshy, or at best subcoriaceous, very 
stout and conical, certainly incapable of rapid movement, and serving 
rather as props,’’ the author appears to be describing rather a caterpillar- 
like form thana Myriopod. It seems to us that the larve of the neuropter- 
ous Punorpide, with their two-jointed abdominal prop-legs, small head 
and singularly large spinose spines, arising in groups from a tubercle or 
mammilla, come nearer to Paleocampa than any Myriopod with which 
science is at present acquainted. or these reasons, and while the nature 
of these fossils is so problematical, we should exclude them, as regards 
the Myriopods, from any genealogical considerations, 
We have also attempted to show that the Archypolypodat} are a subdi- 
*The Affinities of Palseeocampa Meek and Worthen, as evidence of the wide 
diversity of type in the earliest known Myriopods, by Samuel H. Scudder. 
Amer. Journ. Science, xxiv, No, 141, p. 161, Sept, L882, 
+The Systematic Positions of the Archipolypoda, a Group of Fossil Myrio- 
pods. Amer, Naturalist, 826, March, 1883. 
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