PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 501 



sects and crustaceans. Each arthropod has the body composed 

 of rings placed end to end and bearing jointed appendages, and 

 in the myriapods each ring and its appendages can be plainly 

 seen, whereas in the higher forms of the branch many of the rings 

 are so combined as to be very difficult to make out. 



Full forty kinds of myriapods occur in any area comprising 

 one hundred square miles in the eastern United States. About 

 twenty-five of them go by the general name of " thousand-legs," 

 as each has from forty to fifty- five cylindrical rings in the body, 

 and two pairs of legs to each ring. The other fifteen belong to 

 the " centiped " group, the body consisting of about sixteen flat- 

 tened segments, or rings, each bearing a single pair of legs. 

 When disturbed, the "thousand-legs" always coils up and re- 

 mains motionless, shamming death, or "playing 'possum," as it is 

 popularly put, as a means of defense ; while the centiped scam- 

 pers hurriedly away and endeavors to hide beneath leaf, chip, or 

 other protecting object. All those found in the Northern States 

 are perfectly harmless, the true centiped, whose bite is reputed 

 much more venomous than it really is, only being found in the 

 South. True, some of the centiped group can pinch rather 

 sharply with their beetle-like jaws, and one, our largest and most 

 common species, a brownish-red fellow about three inches long 

 and without eyes, can even draw blood if its jaws happen to 

 strike a tender place. When handled, it always tries to bite, per- 

 haps out of revenge for the abominably long Latin name given it 

 by its describer. In fact, the name is longer than the animal 

 itself Scolo-po-cryp-tops sex-spi-no-sa being its cognomen in 

 full. With such a handle attached to it, who can blame it for 

 attempting to bite ? Yet to the scientist up on his Latin each 

 part of the above name bears a definite and tangible meaning. 

 All the myriapods found in the woods and fields feed upon 

 decaying vegetation, such as leaves, stems of weeds, and rotten 

 wood, and in winter three or four species can usually be found 

 within or beneath every decaying log or stump. One species 

 with very long legs is often found in damp houses or in cellars. 

 It is sometimes called the " wall-sweeper," on account of its rapid, 

 ungainly gait, and is even reputed to prey upon cockroaches and 

 other household pests. 



Spiders, which do not undergo such changes as do most of 

 the common, six-footed insects, winter either as eggs or in the 

 mature form. The members of the "sedentary" or web-spin- 

 ning group, as a rule, form nests in late autumn, in each of 

 which are deposited from fifty to eighty eggs, which survive 

 the winter and hatch in the spring, as soon as the food supply 

 of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes appears. The different forms of 

 spiders' nests are very interesting objects of study. Some are 



