2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I40 



of several human beings, indeed, has resulted from the venom injected 

 by their poison claws. Less common is the morbidity known as 

 chilopodiasis, which is the invasion of a sinus by a centipede.^ As a 

 zoogeographical fact, however, western civilization is spared all but 

 the occasional horror of seeing Scutigera, the common house centi- 

 pede, caught by surprise running across a tile floor. 



The Chilopoda are recognized as a class of the phylum Arthropoda 

 and include only the opisthogoneate centipedes, which bear one pair 

 of legs per segment. The progoneate millipedes, easily distinguished 

 by the presence of two pairs of legs per segment, belong to the class 

 Diplopoda. At one time both classes were grouped together in the 

 Myriapoda, a term erected by Latreille in 1802, but, though still in use, 

 it no longer has taxonomic status. 



All centipedes fall into one of two classes: Notostigmophora 

 and Pleurostigmophora (Verhoefif, 1925) or Anamorpha and Epi- 

 morpha (Attems, 1926). The classificatory schemes of three taxon- 

 omists serve to define the position of the Geophilomorpha and will 

 be of historical as well as systematic interest. Pocock (1902) con- 

 sidered the Geophilomorpha the most primitive stock and gave the 

 following classification : 



Subclass Pleurostigma. 

 Orders : 



Geophilomorpha. 

 Scolopendromorpha. 

 Craterostigmophora. 

 Lithobiomorpha. 

 Subclass Notostigma. 



Order Scutigeromorpha. 



Stressing the importance of an embryological character not known to 

 Pocock, Verhoefif (1925) further refined the classification by erecting 

 two superorders in the Pleurostigmophora. His scheme is inverted to 

 reflect the primitive condition of the Scutigeromorpha. The summary 

 of his classification is as follows : 



Subclass Notostigmophora. 



Order Scutigeromorpha. 

 Subclass Pleurostigmophora. 

 Superorder Anamorpha. 

 Orders : 

 Lithobiomorpha. 

 Craterostigmophora. 



3 Wilson (1929) gives the history of a patient who sneezed an arthropod into 

 his handkerchief, promptly relieving a nasal congestion of several years. The 

 article erroneously refers to the organism as an insect, but the photograph 

 clearly identifies it as a geophilomorph. 



