{238}I conclude, then, that the cheliceræ must truly be included in the
prosomatic group, but that they stand in a somewhat different category to
the rest of the prosomatic appendages, inasmuch as they take up a very
median anterior and somewhat dorsal position, and their ganglia of origin
are also exceptional in position.
Next for consideration come the chilaria (7 in Fig. 103), which Lankester
did not consider to belong to appendages at all, but to be a peculiar pair
of sternites. Yet their very appearance, with their spinous hairs
corresponding to those of the other gnathites and their separate
nerve-supply, all point distinctly to their being a modified pair of
appendages, and, indeed, the matter has been placed beyond doubt by the
observations of Kishinouye, who has found embryologically that they arise
in the same way as the rest of the prosomatic appendages, and belong to a
distinct prosomatic segment, viz. the seventh segment. In accordance with
this, Brauer has found that in the scorpion there is in the embryo a
segment, whose appendages degenerate, which is situated between the segment
bearing the last pair of thoracic appendages and the genital operculum--a
segment, therefore, comparable in position to the chilarial segment of
Limulus.
Coming now to the five locomotor appendages, we find that they resemble
each other to a considerable extent in most cases, with, however, certain
striking differences. Thus in Limulus they are chelate, with their basal
joints formed as gnathites, except in the case of the fifth appendage, in
which the extremity is modified for the purpose of digging in the sand. In
Pterygotus, Slimonia, Eurypterus, the first four of these appendages are
very similar, and are called by Huxley and Woodward endognaths; in all
cases they possess a basal part or sterno-coxal process, which acts as a
gnathite or foot-jaw, and a non-chelate tactile part, which possesses no
prehensile power, and in most cases could have had no appreciable share in
locomotion, called by Huxley and Woodward the palpus. These small palps
were probably retractile, and capable of being withdrawn entirely under the
hood. The fifth appendage is usually different, being a large swimming
organ in Pterygotus, Eurypterus, and Slimonia (Figs. 8 and 104), and is
known as the ectognath.
Finally, in _Drepanopterus Bembycoides_, as stated by Laurie, all five
locomotor appendages are built up after the same fashion, the last one not
being formed as a paddle-shaped organ or elongated as {239}in Stylonurus,
but all five possess no special locomotor or prehensile power. According to
Laurie this is a specially primitive form of the group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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