Liberia *- 



bright lemon-yellow while the limbs and head are black. The 

 common house spider on the brick walls of Monrovia is a species 

 of Heteropoda (a sideways-walking spider). This large, grey, 

 long-legged, flat-bodied spider is usually of the female gender, if 

 observed by Europeans, because the male is smaller and much 

 more restless. The female broods over her large white bag of 

 eggs till they are hatched. 



In the interior large tarantula spiders {Lycosa) are met with 

 away from the forest ; and in the long grass there are the usual 

 red ticks, whose bite is more or less poisonous. 



Centipedes of the genus Scolopendra sometimes attain a 

 length of eight inches, and are lugubriously coloured in deep 

 blue-grey with yellow at the joints and on the legs, somewhat 

 after the fashion of the forest scorpion. The bite of these 

 large centipedes is very poisonous. They frequent rotting wood, 

 and any one going through the forest who feels tempted to rest 

 by sitting on a fallen log by the wayside had better be cautious 

 that in so doing he does not sit on or near a centipede, 

 which may be coloured so like the blue-grey and yellow of 

 the trunk as to be not readily distinguished. The present writer 

 has observed a Geophilus centipede (reddish yellow, very long 

 and serpentine) more than once in Liberia, also a species of 

 Scutigera (short-bodied centipede with very long legs and 

 antennas), but did not succeed in transmitting the specimens for 

 identification. The harmless millipedes (Julus) are very abundant 

 in forest and field outside the towns. They grow to as much 

 as eight inches in length, are thick and rounded in outline, 

 generally black in colour, with red or orange legs, and are 

 without pointed poisonous mandibles. They live on decaying 

 vegetation, roll into a ball if touched, and for their protection 



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