WILLIAMS: HABITS OF SCUTIGERELLA. 
469 
Experimental Evidence Concerning Food. 
To quote from Latzel ( 84 ): “Welche (Nahrung) wahrscheinlich 
in noch kleineren Arthropoden besteht. Auf animalische Nahrung 
weist nicht bloss der Bau ihrer Mundtheile und in gerader Erstreckung 
verlaufende Darmeanal hin, sondern auch die ziemlich bedeutende 
Agilitat dieser Thierchen.” The ease with which Scutigerella can 
be kept in captivity would indicate, however, a notable ability for 
resisting starvation if they are carnivorous. After being kept for 
six months in the laboratory under conditions which would promise 
very little sustenance of any sort, animal or vegetable, some individuals 
still survived. Though the animals are at all times very busy with 
their mouthparts, it is impossible to prove that they are eating. A 
specimen which had been isolated in an air bubble for some time, 
when freed, acted as if it were licking the surface of a cast skin on which 
it happened to stumble. Their diet is to be determined definitely 
only by microscopic examination of the contents of the digestive tract. 
The sections which have thus far been examined offer no conclusive 
arguments for or against Dr. Latzel’s theory as stated above. There 
is no question but that vegetable material of one kind or another is 
among the contents of the intestine, nor that it makes up the greater 
portion of the oval masses of faecal matter which are to be found 
wherever Scutigerella inhabits decaying wood. These masses vary 
in length from 0.12 mm. to 0.2 mm., and in breadth from 0.1 mm. to 
0.16 mm. 
The contents of the mid-gut are bounded by a membrane-like 
line such as Folsom and Welles (’ 06 ) indicate about the contents of 
the gut of a Collembolan (see fig. 7, pi. 38). This peritrophic mem¬ 
brane they found was secreted by the epithelium of the intestine. 
The material in the mid-intestine shows by its reaction to stains 
that it is composed of material much more like protoplasm than like 
cellulose in its appearance. Especially is this true in the anterior 
part of the mid-intestine where the food has not yet been sufficiently 
digested to concentrate foreign bodies like bast fibers, wood fibers, 
and fungus threads, as these would be concentrated in the posterior 
end of the mid-gut. 
Those specimens in which the intestinal contents were plainest 
indicated that Protozoa which swarm over the decaying materials 
