MYRIAPOD^. 13 



CASE have no eyes ; but the majority are provided with two clusters of 

 single eyes varying in number. It is divided into two great 

 sections, the most important character of which, so far as the 

 economic entomologist is concerned, is that the one (with two 

 curious exceptions, the Sugentia, where the mandibles are con- 

 verted into a sucking apparatus, and the Pauropoda, which are 

 wholly aberrant), has its jaws or mandibles formed on the ordi- 

 nary plan adopted in insects that bite their food, while the other 

 has them formed out of its fore-legs into something half-leg, half- 

 jaw, after the fashion of the falces of spiders, with a sharp point 

 and a hollow duct up their core, which is connected with a poison 

 gland, as in the spider. The former of these sections compose 

 the Chilognaths (meaning jaw-jawed insects) or Diplopods, the 

 latter the Chilopods (meaning foot-jawed insects) or Scolopen- 

 dridae. This difference in the character of their jaws is a very 

 important one for the horticulturist, as in this instance it is a 

 character by which he ought to be able to distinguish between 

 his friends and his enemies. The Julidae have their jaws per- 

 fectly adapted for biting vegetables as well as any other matter. 

 The Scolopendridse have not, and the same principle that enabled 

 Cuvier to determine the nature of his fossil vertebrates, whether 

 carnivorous or herbivorous, equally applies to the organs of 

 feeding in these insects. Both, to be sure, are equally under the 

 ban of horticulturists, because both are found by them in injured 

 roots of plants, and they credit both alike with the damage done, 

 although the one actually did it or helped to do it, and the other 

 only came there to prey upon the insects that were busy doing 

 it. Curtis, although himself regarding the Scolopendrse as carni- 

 vorous, mentions that the late Mr. Hope " attributed the Potato 

 disease to the attacks of the wire-worm, and also to a small Scolo- 

 pendra which he had found in myriads infesting diseased Potatoes 

 at Southend,'' and Curtis adds that he himself " observed them in 

 rotten Potatoes in August 1845; and in September 1848 Geo- 

 phalus electricus was running about in every direction when the 



