IVORMS, CRAYFISH, C EN TIP EDS, ETC. 



i6i 



plates. The true centipeds (fig. 117), have twenty-one 

 to twenty-three body-rings, each with a pair of legs, and 

 the antenna; have seventeen to twenty segments. They 

 live in warm regions, some grow- 

 ing to be very large, as long as 

 twelve inches or more. The bite 

 or wound made by the poison- 

 claws is fatal to insects and other 

 small animals, their prey, and 

 painful, or occasionally even 

 dangerous, to man. The popular 

 notion that a centiped stings with 

 all of its feet is fallacious. 



Galley-worms (millipeds) (fig. 

 I 16) can easily be kept alive in 

 shallow glass vessels with a layer 

 of earth in the bottom, and their 

 habits and life-history be studied. 

 They should be fed sliced apples, 

 green leaves, grass, strawberries, 

 fresh ears of corn, etc. They are 

 not poisonous and maybe handled 

 with impunity. They lay their 

 eggs in little spherical cells, or 

 nests, in the ground. An English 

 species, of which the life-history 

 has been studied, lays from sixty 



to one hundred eggs at a time. fig. 118.— The skein centi- 

 The eggs of this species hatch in P'^'^; Scutigera for^ps nat- 



ofc. ir _ nrdX size, common in houses 



about twelve days. and conservatories. (From 



Centipeds and millipeds com- ^"1^"-) 

 pose the class Myriapoda of the branch Arthropoda. 



