A MILLIPEDE, ONE OF THE VEGETARIAN MYRIAPODS
Slow moving ringed creature with four legs to each ring or segment of its body! Watch its legs move in ripples as it finds its way over the ground! Unlike its distant relative, the centipede, which has but two legs to each body ring and darts about with most surprising rapidity, this millipede lives mainly on plant food and seldom eats, as does its savage relative, the bodies of small animals which make their home beneath old rotten logs.
A CENTIPEDE, ONE OF THE CARNIVEROUS MYRIAPODS
(Scolopendra sp.)
Perhaps no photograph in the collection serves better to illustrate the vastness of the back yard jungle than this one, for myriapods are the only representatives of a gigantic branch of the animal kingdom, the individuals of which are no more insects than they are lobsters. They live their lives altogether on or in the ground, they do not mind the cold as insects do. Some of them have poison fangs and are reputed to inflict fatal wounds. Their matrimonial habits are strange beyond belief.
They compose a vast neglected assemblage of creatures which some of their admirers believe have a value which we do not yet understand nor appreciate; just as we did not appreciate the role of the mosquito or the earth worm until the researches of modern science taught us of their importance.