Fig. 1.—Mole Cricket (magnified).
According to the lines of a humorous poem, the centipede was said to have been—
'Happy till
One day a toad, in fun,
Said, "Pray which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch
She fell exhausted in the ditch,
Not knowing how to run.'
Fig. 2.—Beetle walking.
The last pair of legs in the centipede and millipede are never used for walking, and are generally much longer than the rest. In a South American species they are provided with delicate nerves, and are used as antennæ or 'feelers,' so that the animal is armed with organs of touch at each end of the body! In one kind of millipede, in the male the last pair of legs has a sound-producing apparatus, consisting of a ridged plate, which, by being rubbed against a set of tiny, bead-like bodies set in the surface of the last shield covering the body, produces a peculiar noise.
Fig. 3.—Centipede (magnified).