Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/487

Rh most posteriorly is again connected with the great median trunk by means of a minute branch, so that the four vessels on each side form, with their trunks, a complete vascular circle above each gan- glionic enlargement of the cord. Besides these, which may be re- garded as the great arterial trunk and vessels conveying the blood directly from the anterior distribution of the heart to the limbs and inferior surface of the body, the author has also discovered a pair of large arterial vessels in each segment, originating directly from the posterior and inferior surface of each chamber of the heart. These vessels he has named the systemic arteries ; and in the Scolopendra he has traced them from the great chamber of the heart, which is situated in the penultimate segment of the body, to their ultimate distribution and ramification in the coats of the great hepatic vessels of the alimentary canal.

After the blood has passed from the arteries, it is returned again to the heart in each segment of the body by means of exceedingly delicate transparent vessels, which pass around the sides of the seg- ments and communicate with the valvular openings of each cham- ber of the heart at its upper surface, where the valvular openings are situated, not only in all the Myriapoda, but also in the Scorpio- nidge. In Scorpions, the circulatory system is more complete and important than even in the Myriapoda. The heart, divided as in Myriapods into separate chambers, is lengthened out at its posterior extremity into a long caudal artery, and gives off a pair of systemic arteries from each chamber, precisely as in the Myriapoda. These arteries not only distribute their blood to the viscera, but send their principal divisions to the muscular structures of the inferior and lateral parts of the body, as well as to the pulmonary sacs. At the anterior part of the abdomen, the heart becomes aortic, descends suddenly into the thorax, and immediately behind the brain spreads out into several pairs of large trunks, which are given to the head, and to the organs of locomotion. The posterior of these trunks form a vascular collar around the oesophagus, beneath which they unite, anteriorly, to a strong bony arch in the middle of the thorax, to form the great arterial trunk, or supra-spinal vessel, which conveys the blood to the posterior part of the body, as in the Myriapoda. This vessel passes beneath the transverse bony arch of the thorax, and is slightly attached to it by fibrous tissue, which circumstance pro- bably induced Professor Miiller, who observed this structure in 1828, to regard it as a ligament. In its course backwards, along the ner- vous cord, this vessel is gradually lessened in size, until it arrives at the terminal ganglion of the cord in the tail, where it is divided into two branches, which take the course of the terminal nerves, and these are again subdivided before they arrive at their ultimate distri- bution. In addition to these parts, the author found a hollow fibrous structure, which closely surrounds the cord and nerves immediately after they have passed beneath the arch of the thorax. From the sides of this structure there pass off backwards two pairs of vessels, that get beneath the peritoneal lining of the abdominal cavity and are distributed on the first pair of branchiae. A small vessel also