Abstract

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 climatal and zoological conditions of this, to us, otherwise terra incognita.

But this interest is greatly enhanced when such remains occur in strata of palæozoic age, in which evidences of land-dwelling animals are extremely rare. Indeed, but for our palæozoic 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 distinct 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 Cyclophthalmus senior (Corda in ‘Böhmischen Verhandlungen,’ 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 4′′. fig. 13).

“This fossil Scorpion,” writes Buckland, “ differs from existing species less in general structure than in