HABITS AND DISTRIBUTION 



35 



head and body are paler, more bleached out than most of the 

 Wyandotte specimens. ... It thus appears that the body is 

 most bleached and the eyes the most rudimentary in the Bradford 

 cave, the smallest and most accessible, and in which consequently 

 there is the most variation in surroundings, temperature, access of 

 light and changed condition of air. Under such circumstances 

 as these we should naturally expect the most variation." ^ 



A strong contrast to these anihials is afforded us by the 

 Scutigeridae (Schizotarsia). They are unknown in this country, 

 but abound in some of the Mediterranean countries and in parts 

 of Africa. They remind one strongly of spiders, with their long 



Fig. 17. Cermatia {Scutigera) variegafa. 



/ / 1 \ \ 



(From C. L. Koch, Die Myriapoden.) 



legs and their peculiar way of running on stones and about the 

 walls of houses. 



Some years ago I was in Malta, and I used to go and watch 

 them on the slopes outside Valetta, where they were to be found 

 in great numbers. They used to come out from beneath great 

 stones and run about rapidly on the ground or on the stones and 

 rubbish with which the ground was covered, now and again 

 making a dart at some small insect which tempted them, and 

 seemingly not minding the blazing sun at all. As might be 

 expected from their habits, their eyes, far from being rudi- 

 mentary, like those of the cave-living Fseudotremia, or absent 



^ "A Revision of the Lysiopetalidae, a family of the Chilognath Myriapoda, with 

 a notice of the genus Cambala," by A. S. Packard, junior, Froc. Amer. Phil. Soc. 

 xxi. 1884, p. 187. 



