A STUDY OF CENTIPEDES 
59 
would naturally seem more fitting in our flower-garden, where rich soil, 
moisture, and sunshine give to the plants the beautiful green in their 
leaves and dainty colors in their blossoms. 
The peculiar construction of the leaf-like branches and main stem 
of the cactus, generally, prevents any unnecessary loss of the scanty 
supply of water which reaches its tissues. This is what adapts it to 
the arid regions. 
The amount of water found in a cactus on an arid plain is surpriz¬ 
ing. A knife thrust into one behaves in about the same manner that it 
does when thrust into a watermelon. Then, too, the plant itself, after 
having the needles removed, was found to be valuable as a food for 
cattle. 
The needles, or spines, being difficult to remove, made the cactus of 
very little use. However, the value of the cactus as food engaged the 
attention^ of Mr. Burbank, the welhknown California naturalist, and by 
his untiring efforts in crossing he produced a cactus without spines. 
With the thorns gone and the fruit improved, the cactus bids fair to be 
an excellent food for cattle inj dry regions. Thousands of acres of the' 
spineless cactus are now cultivated for this purpose. Mr, Burbank has 
found five hundred kinds of cactus suitable for feed for stock, and some 
are also found to be valuable in food qualities for mam 
— Wm. A. Bixler. 
A STUDY OF CENTIPEDES 
R ECENTLY I read this statement: “Centipedes have nowhere a 
good reputation. ’ ’ I began to wonder whether all centipedes were 
harmful and if even the poisonous ones had no qualities beneficial to 
man. I began at once to make a search for information concerning 
these creatures and their habits, and found them to be an interesting 
subject of study. 
They vary in length from two or three inches in northern countries 
to a foot or more in the tropics. Their flattened body is made up of 
many segments, or joints, each of which bears one pair of legs. They 
do not, as the name would imply, have one hundred feet. Some species 
have as few as fifteen pairs, and the number of pairs rarely exceeds 
twenty-one. A peculiar characteristic of centipedes, we are told, is that 
