H. WOODWARD ON A BRITISH COAL-MEASURE SCORPION. 57 



6. On the Discovert of a Fossil Scorpion in the British Coal- 

 Measures. By Henry Woodward, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., of the 

 British Museum. (Read November 3, 1875.) 



[Plate VHL] 



The paucity of the remains of any class of terrestrial air-breathing 

 animals preserved in a fossil state, has given to such organisms a 

 special interest in the eyes of geologists, not only as marking the 

 probable position of old land-surfaces, but also as giving us some 

 slight indication of the elimatal and zoological conditions of this, 

 to us, otherwise terra incognita. 



But this interest is greatly enhanced when such remains occur 

 in strata of palaeozoic age, in which evidences of land-dwelling 

 animals are extremely rare. Indeed, but for our palaeozoic coal- 

 strata, we should have little left, save evidences of marine life, older 

 than the Trias. 



I have now the pleasure of announcing the discovery, in two dis- 

 tinct localities in England, of the remains of a fossil Scorpion in 

 strata of Coal-measure age, and possibly in a third locality in 

 Scotland. 



So long ago as 1835, Count Sternberg published the discovery of 

 a remarkable fossil Scorpion in the Coal formation at the village 

 of Chomle, near Radnitz, Bohemia, afterwards named and described 

 by Corda as Cyclophtliahnus senior (Corda in ' Bohmischen Verhand- 

 lungen,' 1836, and < Wiegmann's Archiv,' 1836, ii. p. 360). 



This is the first authentic record of an Arachnide in the Coal- 

 measures. It has been figured in the ' Transactions of the Royal 

 Bohemian Museum ; ' and these figures were reproduced by the late 

 Dr. Buckland in his * Geology and Mineralogy ' (1836, plate 46' 

 and 46". fig. 13). 



"This fossil Scorpion," writes Buckland, "differs from existing 

 species less in general structure than in the position of the eyes. 

 In the latter respect it approaches nearest to the genus Androctonus, 

 which, like it, has twelve eyes, but differently disposed from those 

 of the fossil species., From the nearly circular arrangement of these 

 organs in the latter animal, it has been ranged under a new genus, 

 Cyclqphthalmus" (Buckland, op. cit. vol. i. p. 407). 



This remarkable fossil remained unique until 1839, when Corda 

 added a new genus of Pseudo-scorpions, also from the coal of 

 Bohemia, which he named Mierolabis. 



No other Scorpion was noticed from the Coal-measures until 

 1868, when Messrs. Meek and Worthen, in their ' Palaeontology of 

 Illinois,' described a new form of this ancient family (from the lower 

 part of the true Coal-measures of Mazon Creek, Morris, Grundy 

 County, Illinois) * under the name of Eoscorpius carbonarius. This 



* Geological Survey of Illinois (A. H. Worthen, Director), vol. iii. 1868 

 (Palaeontology, by F. B. Meek and A. II. Worthen, p. 560, with woodcut). 



