FALSE SCORPIONS. 
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mid-day sun. Most species of* Solpugidce are extremely active, running with great 
speed; but those of Rhax —which have enormous mandibles and short thick legs— 
are slow movers, and it is probable that the equally short-legged South African 
Hexisopus is also relatively sluggish. When on the prowl, these creatures carry 
the body raised high on the posterior six legs, those of the first pair and the palpi 
being lifted up and waved in the air to feel the way, while the movements of 
the head from side to side bear witness to their eagerness to discover prey. 
Many stories are told of the courage and voracity of these animals. Their food 
seems to consist mostly of beetles or other insects; but they will not hesitate 
to attack such redoubtable adversaries as scorpions. 
The False Scorpions, —Order Pseudoscorpiones. 
The false scorpions are all of minute size, the largest not exceeding a quarter 
of an inch in length. They owe their name to the fact that, as in the true 
scorpions, the appendages of the second pair are of enormous size as compared with 
the body, and form pincers; the mandibles being small, and also pincer-like, while 
all the legs are of the ordinary locomotor type. There is, moreover, no waist 
separating the thorax from the abdomen, and the latter is distinctly jointed. All 
these characters impart a considerable superficial likeness to scorpions, and 
formerly the two groups were looked upon as closely allied, although there are in 
reality many important, deep-seated differences between them. The abdomen, for 
instance, in the Pseudoscorpiones, is practically the same width throughout, none of 
the posterior segments being narrowed to form a tail, and 
the last bears no skeletal piece at all comparable to the 
scorpion’s sting. The breathing - organs in the false 
scorpions are structurally of the same nature as those of 
the Solifugce, consisting of tracheal tubes, which open by 
two pairs of stigmata, situated upon the third and fourth 
abdominal segments. Like the true spiders, the false 
scorpions possess silk-glands, but these are situated, not in 
the abdomen, but in the cephalothorax, and open by 
minute apertures at the tip of the movable fingers of the 
mandibles. In addition to these glands, there are others in the abdomen termed 
cement-glands, which open upon the second and third sternal plates. The function 
of these is not known, but it has been suggested that they may secrete the gummy 
material which causes the eggs to adhere together. The eyes, either two or four 
in number, are placed on the sides of the forepart of the head-region. 
The false scorpions, which occur in all temperate and tropical countries, live 
for the most part under stones and the bark of trees, or hidden in moss or vegetable 
rubbish; only two European species, namely, Chelifer cancroides and Chiridium 
mubseorum, are commonly found in human dwellings, in dark corners and the 
wainscoting of rooms, in herbaria, or even in boxes of insect collections. Under 
these conditions the former is but rarely met with, but large numbers have been 
taken together in old bee-hives, wasp-nests, and badly kept pigeon-houses. The 
two species, however, are by no means found exclusively in habitats of this nature, 
book scorpion, Chelifer can¬ 
croides (much enlarged). 
