with Observations on the General Arrangement of the Articulata. 267 



considered as a distinct class, notwithstanding the opinions that have recently 

 been urged by some naturalists in regard to their supposed identity with true 

 insects. 



The place assigned to the Myriapoda by Linnaeus was at the end of his 

 order Aptera, immediately before the true F'ermes. This arrangement is in 

 full accordance with the facts now ascertained respecting their metamorphoses 

 and mode of growth, which indicate their close affinity to the latter class. 

 Fabricius allied them to some of the true Crustaceans, the Oniscidce or Wood- 

 lice, with which he formed them into the order Mitosata, and interposed them 

 between his order Odonata and the Arachnida, a situation, assuredly, as 

 unnatural as the objects themselves are dissimilar in habits and structure. 

 Lamarck arranged them in his third class of invertebrated animals with the 

 Arachnida, and associated them with some true Hexapods, the Thysanoura, 

 to form his second order, Arachnides Antennistes ; thus collecting together in 

 the same group, as Gervais has well remarked*, animals that belong to three 

 very distinct classes. Our own countryman. Dr. Leach f, was the first natu- 

 ralist that appears to have carefully examined these animals, which, following 

 to a certain extent the views of Fabricius, he grouped together as a distinct 

 class by the name oi Myriapoda. But although Leach avoided the error of Fa- 

 bricius in approximating them to the winged insects, Libellulidce, the Odonata, 

 and connected them more naturally, on the one hand, with the Ci'ustacea, by 

 means of the genera Armadillo and Glomeris, he united them, on the other, 

 to the Arachnida by means of the Geophilidoe and Nymphons, and thus placed 

 them between two classes, the Crustacea and Arachnida, which certainly are 

 more nearly related to each other than to the Myriapoda. 



The class Myriapoda, as established by Leach, has been adopted by many 

 eminent naturalists, but there still exists as great a diversity of opinion in 

 regard to its relation to the other classes as before its separate establishment. 

 De Blainville first connected the Myriapoda with the Annelida by means of 

 the bristly genera, the Annelida errantia ; but subsequently remarked a closer 

 connexion between the two classes in the singular luliform genus Peripatus, 

 Guild., which genus he afterwards established as a separate class. Latreille 



* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Janvier 1837. 

 t Linnean Transactions, vol. xi. p. 376, 1814. 



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