100 NATURAL HISTORY. 



covered with a hard skin divided into segments, resem- 

 bling that of a cellar worm ; its length is one inch and a 

 half; color, blue-gray with yellow spots; it has, it is 

 said, eighty feet, and on the posterior segment, a sting ; 

 it rolls itself into a spiral form. Most of this genus live 

 under stones, where they find nourishment among de- 

 cayed wood, etc. In crawling, they touch the earth 

 frequently with their feelers ; the young at first have 

 only six legs, but as they experience an imperfect meta- 

 morphosis, the number increases. If rubbed between the 

 fingers they emit an unpleasant odor. They deposit 

 their eggs in the earth ; a relative kind, nine inches 

 long and as thick as a finger, is found in South America. 



The Centipedes (scolopendra morsitans), plate 26, 

 fig. 7, have a flat, ribbon-like body, divided into hard 

 segments ; their mouths are furnished with small, sharp 

 teeth, which are hollow and filled with venom. They 

 are six inches long, and nearly half an inch in breadth ; 

 have twenty-one pairs of feet, and eight eyes. The 

 color is yellow, with black on the edges. They are 

 found in the torrid zone, living among rotten wood, in 

 books, straw, etc. The bite is very painful, but not 

 deadly. They have been carried, living, to Holland, by 

 ships in which they harbored. Insects wounded by them 

 die instantly. They will crawl over the faces of persons 

 sleeping, and on any attempt to take them, bite severely. 



The Sugar Worm (lepisma saccharina) is three 

 quarters of an inch in length, covered with silvery 

 scales ; has six feet ; long hairy feelers, and three sim- 



subject than could be presented in the same compass by following 

 the later and more strictly anatomical methods of other naturalists. 

 The author of the present -work has simplified still more, by dividing 

 insects into five orders only. Tr. 



