MYRIAPODS. 25 



CASE a cockroach with a single nip." Another example of the severity 

 of the bite came within our own personal knowledge. The sufferer 

 was the manager of a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the bygone 

 days, when there were still slaves, and Jamaica was still Jamaica ; 

 and in the " boiling season," when the juice of the cane is boiled 

 to produce the sugar, it was his duty or practice to visit the boilers 

 during the night to see that the fires were kept up and no inter- 

 mission allowed in the process. On these occasions he merely 

 threw on a dressing-gown and thrust his naked feet into slippers 

 while he took a hasty round through the works. While thus 

 engaged he was once bitten on the leg a little above the ankle by 

 one of these large centipeds. They are nocturnal animals, and 

 of course most lively and alert at night. He described the pain 

 as so excruciating that he almost fainted on the spot, and had to 

 be assisted into the house. As to the structure of the apparatus 

 for poisoning the wound made by the bite, that was satisfactorily 

 made out by Mr. Newport, the eminent entomologist, whose loss 

 is still deplored by our older naturalists. Until he worked it out, 

 the gland by which the poison of the centiped is secreted had not 

 been shown. Leewenhoek discovered at the apex of the man- 

 dibles an orifice that communicated internally with an elongated 

 cavity, and he also saw a drop of fluid exude from the orifice, but 

 he did not discover the true secreting gland — which, however, 

 Newport did. He not only confirmed Leewenhoek's observation 

 in regard to the existence of a longitudinal opening at the inner 

 margin of the apex of the mandible, but also traced it backwards 

 to a sac with which it communicates, and discovered the gland of 

 which it is the reservoir. It is to be observed, that the effect of 

 the bite of a centiped in warm climates is very various ; sometimes 

 excessively virulent and painful, at others causing little incon- 

 venience. It is, no doubt, in a great measure due to the state of 

 health and constitution of the individual sufferer and his conse- 

 quent susceptibility to disease ; but, moreover, from experiments 

 on venomous snakes, we now well know that the virulence of the 



