XIX 
ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOUTH AND 
PHARYNX OF THE SCORPION 
Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. vitti., 1860, pp. 250—254. 
ALTHOUGH the scorpion has been made the subject of repeated in- 
vestigations by some of the best minute anatomists of past and 
present times, it is a remarkable circumstance that no exact account 
of the structure of the commencement of its alimentary canal is to 
be met with, at least so far as my knowledge extends. Meckel 
(‘Beitrage zur Vergleichenden Anatomie,’ Band i, Heft 2, 1809), as 
might be expected from the fact that his dissections were performed 
without the aid of even a magnifier (page 106), takes no particular 
notice of the small and delicate parts in question. Treviranus (‘ Bau 
der Arachniden,’ 1812) is equally silent as to this important portion 
of the economy of the scorpion; and even the accurate Johannes 
Miller, in the essay entitled “ Beitrage zur Anatomie des Scorpions ” 
(Meckel’s ‘ Archiv.,’ 1828), which threw so much new light upon the 
organization of this animal, although he saw more than either his 
predecessors or his successors have done, did not probe the matter 
to the bottom. In describing the alimentary canal, he merely 
says:—‘The pharynx which arises in front of the brain, upon a 
particular, strongly excavated, portion of the skeleton, is much wider 
than the rest of the intestine, and resembles a vesicle. The 
cesophagus is very delicate where it proceeds from this vesicle, rises 
between the very stout nerves for the chele, above the brain (which 
lies behind the pharynx), and passes over the saddle-shaped upper 
excavation of the internal thoracic skeleton, whilst the spinal cord 
and the posterior cerebral nerves pass through the opening of the 
same skeleton.” 
