March 1, 1369.] HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE -GOSSIP. 



4!) 



MYBIAPODS. 



By MAJOR HOLLAND, R.M.L.l. 



LEASE, sir, 

 here's one of 

 them nasty mis- 

 chiefull many- 

 legs as I told 

 youpisened the 

 melon-bed so as 

 we never got nothink off of 

 'em. Nobody can't say as 

 they wasn't took care of, for 

 I was a waterin' and a water- 

 in' on 'em mornin', noon, 

 and night, all along the 

 droughty summer. It stands 

 reasonable-like to natur' as 

 water-melons should take a 

 sight o' water : t wasn't my 

 overdoin' on 'em with mis- 

 ture as rotted the roots off ; 

 'twas these here plaguey 

 varmint " ! ! 



Having delivered this 

 oration, and proved to his own entire satisfaction 

 " as how he was right all along, and master was 

 mistook" about poor Curcurbita citrullus having 

 been drenched to death with icy pump-water, the 

 obstinate old gardener deposited his writhing scape- 

 goat on the study table, and retired triumphant to 

 the coach-house, where he whistled loud paeans of 

 victory to the Bramahs and Cochins of the stable- 

 yard. 



What yellow-brown Myriapod is this ? His 

 flexible body, which he is tying into all manner of 

 knots, is composed of no fewer than eighty-one dis- 

 tinct segments, to say nothing of the odd one at the 

 end of the tail, aud the five which have coalesced 

 to form the head. If we count these five fused 

 segments as one (as we do the four which Pro- 

 fessor Huxley tells us combine together to make up 

 our own human brainboxes), then his body is made 

 up of eighty-three somites, of which the cephalic, 

 the anterior-thoracic, which bears that terrible pair 

 No. 51. 



of hooked maxillipedes, and the anal are the only 

 three presenting any marked differences from each 

 other, and from the eighty others which are as 

 " strictly uniform " as the helmets of the metro- 

 politan police. 



How the fellow shuns the light ! Does his con- 

 science trouble him ? Does he feel himself guilty of 

 "pisenin' " the melons, that he wriggles so uneasily 

 until he succeeds in burying himself out of sight in 

 the silk tassel of the penwiper ? A burrowing- 

 troglodyte by nature, I suspect, and on closer ex- 

 amination he proves to be such — Geophilus sub- 

 terraneus (underground earth-lover), of the family 

 GeophU'uhc, of the sub-division Chilopoda (foot 

 feeders), of the order Myriapoda, of the class. 

 Articulata, according to Newport. 



He has no eyes ; he doesn't want any ; he passes- 

 his life in the dark, underground, tearing up old 

 shreds of farmyard manure and vegetable matter,, 

 always preferring scavengers' work when he can. 

 get it, and doing good service by eating up the 

 helpless, soft, succulent larva? of the hosts of insects 

 that prey upon our crops. The sins of the wire- 

 worm have been laid to his charge; his third 

 cousins the hdidce do undoubtedly steal our potato 

 "sets," and bore into young peas, or rather into 

 old peas just "spritting" and about to send up. 

 young ones ; but it seems doubtful if he himself 

 ever attacks fresh or living vegetables : he seems 

 to be one of nature's many vidangeurs, and because 

 he is found minding his business and eating up 

 rottenness, he is accused of producing it. As well 

 might we say that our sewer-men produce typhus and 

 cholera. But he has even been charged with having 

 caused the potato disease ! because he was found 

 labouring to remove the affected tubers. Beware,, 

 ye brave surgeons who fight with zymotic demons 

 and risk your own lives to lilt up stricken humanity, 

 lest ye be arraigned for producing all the long cata- 

 logue of human ills that figure in our sanitary 

 statistics. 



Our captive has no eyes ; he has, however, an 



D 



