This division of Miss Beck's muscle (62) into three or four muscles brings
the prosomatic region of the scorpion into line with the mesosomatic, and
enables us to feel sure that a single pair of dorso-ventral somatic muscles
belongs to each prosomatic segment just as to each mesosomatic, and,
conversely, that each such single pair of muscles possesses segmental value
in this region as much as in the mesosomatic.
It is very striking to see how in all the Scorpionidæ, in which the two
median eyes are the principal eyes, this muscle group (62) on the two sides
closely surrounds these two eyes, so that with a fixed {271}pre-oral
entosclerite, a slight movement of the eyes, laterally or anteriorly, owing
to the flexibility of the carapace, might result as the consequence of
their contraction. But this cannot be the main object of these muscles. The
pre-oral entosclerite is firmly fixed to the camerostome, as is seen in
Fig. 94, _pr. ent._, so that the main object of these muscles is, as Huxley
has pointed out, the movement of this organ.
In order to avoid repetition of the long name given to this muscle group
(62) by Miss Beck, because of their position, and for other reasons which
will appear in the sequel, I will call this group of muscles the group of
recti muscles. These recti muscles belong clearly to the segments posterior
to the first prosomatic or cheliceral segment, and represent certainly
three, probably four, of these segments, _i.e._ belong to the segments
corresponding to the second, third, fourth, and fifth prosomatic locomotor
appendages--the endognaths of the old Eurypterids.
The next pair of muscles is the pair of anterior dorso-plastron muscles
(63). This muscle-pair evidently belongs to a segment posterior to the
segments represented by the group already discussed, and belongs,
therefore, in all probability to the same segment as the sixth pair of
prosomatic appendages--the ectognaths of the old Eurypterids. This can be
settled by considering either the nerve-supply or the embryological
development. In the Eurypteridæ it seems most highly probable that the
dorso-ventral muscles of each half of the segments belonging to the
endognaths should be compressed together and separate from the
dorso-ventral muscle belonging to the ectognathal segment, on account of
the evident concentration and small size of the endognathal segments in
contradistinction to the separateness and large size of the ectognathal
segment.
The striking peculiarity of this muscle-pair, which distinguishes it from
all other muscles in the scorpion, is the common attachment of the muscles
of the two sides in the mid-dorsal line, so that the pair of muscles forms
an arch through which the alimentary canal and dorsal blood-vessel pass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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