574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of lowly, creeping things of earth that do not attain to the dignity 

 of lungs ! There is a saving of time, too, for the blood is made arterial 

 while on its journey, and thus travels direct (without the delay of 

 passing off to special pulmonary organs) to the performance of its 

 functions, removing, replacing, renewing, sustaining, building up, ab- 

 sorbing. Having accomplished these, and become as it were venous, 

 it passes into the intervisceral spaces, and there, receiving an in- 

 crement of fresh globules, the products of digestion, completes its 

 circuit by returning through distinct valvular openings into the dor- 

 sal vessel from which it was first distributed. " Among the Chilog- 

 natha" says Siebold, " the Iulidce are noticeable for the very simple 

 character of their trachean apparatus ; their air-canal's neither ramify 

 nor anastomose. With the Glomerina the tracheae are branched, but 

 do not anastomose; but those of the Chilopoda are very ramose, and 

 their large trunks intercommunicate at their origin by longitudinal 

 and transverse anastomoses, so that each stigma can introduce air into 

 the entire trachean system." It was chiefly with the view of drawing 

 attention to this last-mentioned fact (a most striking evidence of de- 

 sign), to this remarkable example of the exquisite adaptation of the 

 creature's construction to the condition of existence ordained for it by 

 the Creator, that I began this bit of simple gossip about Geophilus. 

 In his subterranean career he constantly meets with accidents which 

 link him up in sympathetic association with Brunei and Stephenson, 

 and the Bedouin of the desert. He never bored a practicable highway 

 beneath the bed of Isis, nor made firm the foundations of an iron road 

 across the quaking surface of Chat Moss ; neither has he braved the 

 burning sand-blasts of the simoom ; yet in his degree he has met with 

 such like critical experiences a hundred times. 



One day the roof of his tunnel crashed in upon him, and buried a 

 dozen of his segments, squeezing the very breath out of them ; on 

 another day the rain had saturated the rubbish-heap he was toiling 

 in, a score or two of his somites were under water, and he had to "bat- 

 ten down" the stigmata belonging thereto to save those portions of 

 himself from drowning ; and yet, again, in the scorching dog-days, a 

 hot wind swept the earth, and a dry and thirsty clod, crumbling away, 

 discharged an avalanche of dust which overwhelmed nine-tenths of 

 him. In each and all of these catastrophes his life would not have 

 been worth ten seconds' purchase, even with his many spiracles, but 

 for the anastomosing branches of his windpipes, the cross-rungs of 

 his air-ladder, which enabled the air received by the unchoked segments 

 to pass in every direction through the whole system. That there is 

 perfectly free communication from any one spiracle to the whole net- 

 work of air-passages maybe seen by examining the figure which I have 

 given ; and if any reader has still a doubt on his mind he may remove 

 it, if he is a dexterous manipulator, by dissecting out the tracheary 

 apparatus of the first chilopodons Myriapod he can lay hands on ; 



