GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 



Family 4. JuliiJ.ae. A number of species of this family have been 

 found, some in amber, some in other Tertiary strata. Amongst the latter a 

 probable example of Julus terrestris, living at the present time. 



Family 5. Polyxenidae. Five species have been found in amber. 



Now that we have considered the structure of the Myriapods 

 and the groups into which they are subdivided or classified, we 

 may proceed to consider what position they hold in the house- 

 hold of nature. That they present certain features of similarity 

 to other classes has been already mentioned, and that this is the 

 fact cannot be doubted when we look back at the way in which 

 they have been classified in the works of early writers. For 

 example, Lamarck, the great French naturalist, classifies them 

 with spiders in his well-known work, La Philosophic Zoologique, 

 under the name of Arachnides antennistes. Cuvier, the com- 

 parative anatomist, unites them with the Insects, making them 

 the first Order, while the Thysanura is the second. "We have 

 already seen that one Order of Myriapods, the Symphyla, bears 

 a great resemblance to the Thysanura. The English naturalist 

 Leach was the first to establish Myriapods as a class, and his 

 arrangement has been followed by all naturalists after his time. 

 But while their peculiarities of structure and form are sufficiently 

 marked to separate them as a class, it cannot be denied that the 

 older naturalists were right to recognise that they have ma in- 

 essential characteristics in common with other classes of animals. 

 And recent investigations have emphasised this fact. For in- 

 stance, let us consider the recent discoveries of the Orders of 

 Symphyla and Pauropoda, Orders which, while bearing so 

 many of the characters of Myriapods that naturalists have 

 agreed to place them in that class, yet resemble in many 

 important points the Insect Order of Thysanura. This seems to 

 justify Cuvier in claiming the close relationship for them that 

 he did. 



Eecent investigations have also brought out more prominently 

 the resemblances to the Worms. Of late, considerable atten- 

 tion has been directed to Peripafais (see pp. 1-26), and the resem- 

 blances to the Myriapods in its anatomy and development are 

 such that Latzel has actually included it in the Myriapods as 

 an Order, Malacopoda. Now Peripatus also shows resemblances 

 to the annelid Worms, and thus affords us a connexion to the 

 Worm type hardly less striking than that to the Insect. This 



