Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/412

 the French and English scientific journals. Scorpions had already been found quite abundantly in the lowest carboniferous strata. The first palaeozoic specimen that came to light (Cyclophthalmus senior) was found in the coal formation of Chombe, Bohemia, and was described by Count Sternberg in 1835. Three years later another scorpion (Microlabis) was described from the same locality. The next discoveries were American, and were made in the coal-measures of Illinois, of two genera which Meek and Worthen described as Eoscorpius (dawn-scorpion) and Mazonia (from Mazon Creek, where they were found). In 1873 Dr. Henry Woodward showed that Eoscorpius remains occurred in the coal-measures of England and in the carboniferous limestone of Scotland; and in 1881 Mr. Benjamin N. Peach described a considerable number of scorpions which had been obtained by the officers of the Geological Survey of Scotland from the lowest carboniferous rocks of the Scottish border. In his paper, which was published in the "Transactions" of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he pointed out the general resemblance and almost equally high organization of these ancient scorpions and those of the present day, and expressed regret that Messrs. Meek and Worthen had given the name of Eoscorpius to their specimens, "for the dawn of the scorpion family must have been at a much earlier period, and we may hope that their remains will yet turn up in the Devonian and Silurian plant-beds when these come to be thoroughly searched."

This prediction has been verified in the discovery of the Scotch and the Swedish Silurian fossils. The Scotch scorpion was discovered first, by Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, who obtained his specimen from Lesmahagow, in Lanarkshire, in June, 1883; but the Swedish professor, Lindström, although a year later in discovery, anticipated him in announcing it and in publishing the description of his fossil.

In a letter of November 24, 1884, to M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Professor Lindström says of his scorpion (Fig. 1): "The specimen is in sufficiently good preservation, and shows the chitinous brown or yellowish-brown cuticle, very thin, compressed, and corrugated by the pressure of the superposed layers. We can distinguish the cephalo-thorax, the abdomen, with seven dorsal laminæ, and the tail, consisting of six segments or rings, the last narrowing and sharpening into the venomous dart. The sculpture of the surface, consisting of tubercles and longitudinal keels, entirely corresponds with that of living scorpions. One of the stigmata on the right is visible, and clearly demonstrates that it must have belonged to an air-breathing animal, and the whole organization indicates that it lived on dry land." Professor Lindström points out, as a feature of great importance in the conformation of the animal, the existence of four pairs of thoracic feet, large and pointed, resembling the feet of the embryos of several other tracheates and animals like the Campodea. This form of feet, he remarks, "no longer exists in the fossil scorpions of the carboniferous