The Myriapods are of separate sexes, and the generative organs in both cases usually have the form of a long unpaired tube, which in the male is connected with accessory glands, and in the female is usually provided with double receptacula seminis. The generative openings usually lie near the base of the second pair of legs (Chilognatha), or at the posterior end of the body (Chilopoda). In the Chilognatha there is usually in the male an external copulatory organ at the base of the seventh pair of legs, remote from the genital opening.
The preceding account of the anatomy of the Myriapods has shown us the general characteristics of the whole group. I shall now take each of the five Orders into which the class is divided in the classification adopted in this account, and endeavour to explain the differences in anatomy which have led to the establishment of the Order. The first Order with which we have to do is that of the Chilognatha, which includes a large number of Myriapods; no less than eight families, some of them including a great number of forms.
Order I. Chilognatha.
The Chilognatha differ from other Orders in the shape of the body. This is in almost all cases, cylindrical or sub-cylindrical, instead of being more or less flattened as in the other Orders.
The body, as in all other Myriapods, is composed of segments, but in the Chilognatha these segments are composed, in almost all cases, of a complete ring of the substance of which the exoskeleton (as the shell of the animal is called) is composed. This substance is in the case of the Chilognatha chitin (a kind of horny substance, resembling, for instance, the outer case of a beetle's wing), containing a quantity of chalk salts and colouring matter; the substance thus formed is hard and tough. In other Orders the chitin of the exoskeleton is without chalky matter and is much more flexible. The length of the body, as may be seen from the classification, may be either very long, as in Julus, or very short, as in Glomeris.
The next anatomical character distinctive of the Order is the form of the appendages. First, the antennae. These are, as a general rule, much shorter than in the Chilopods, never reaching the length of half the body. They are, as a rule, club-shaped, the terminal half being thicker than the half adjoining the body.
The next appendages to be mentioned are the mouth parts. These differ in form from those of the other Orders, and their differences are connected very largely with the fact that the Chilognatha live on vegetable substances. Their mouth parts are adapted for chewing, except in the case of the Polyzoniidae, the eighth family of the Order, in which, according to Brandt, the mouth parts are adapted for sucking, and are prolonged into a kind of proboscis. The mouth parts of the Chilognatha consist of—
(1) An upper lip. A transversely-placed plate, which is fused with the rest of the head.
(2) A pair of powerful mandibles or jaws adapted for mastication, and moved by powerful muscles. f and g in Fig. 33 shows these mandibles, while the rest of the figure constitutes the broad plate (No. 3).
(3) A broad plate covering the under part of the head and partially enclosing the mouth. This structure, which, as we shall afterwards see, is formed by the fusion of two appendages which are distinct in the animal when just hatched, has been called the deutomalae, the jaws receiving the name of protomalae.