I tear a piece of bark from the trunk of this half-decayed tree, and have disclosed amidst the rank-smelling damp and rotten wood, a large _Julus_, a slow-moving creature, with some hundred-and-fifty little twinkling feet. As this specimen has attained its adult condition, it must be at least two years old; for it does not acquire its reproductive organs and perfect development till that age.[70] This creature has passed through a rather curious history of evolutions. The egg from which it was produced was lodged in a chamber excavated by the parent, a few inches below the surface of the rotten mould. From this egg proceeded a little kidney-shaped body, without limbs or motion, completely enveloped in a swathe of delicate transparent membrane. About a fortnight it remained in this helpless state, during which its organs had been forming out of the constituent cells, by repeated subdivision, and definite arrangement. At length it burst its cerement, and a minute Julus appeared, not more than 1/200th of an inch in length, composed of a head with antennae, and a body of eight segments, of which the first three carried each a pair of legs. All the multitudinous limbs which we see in this adult have been produced in successive moultings, and all the numerous segments have been produced by the subdivision of the last but one,--that is the joint preceding the anal one,--six at a time. By the time the little animal was ready for the second sloughing, that is, in about a week after the preceding, three more pairs of feet were seen, which had budded from the fourth, fifth, and sixth segments, but which were as yet closely packed down beneath the investing skin; the seventh segment also was obscurely marked into six divisions. The skin was now thrown off, and these changes were perfected; the little Julus now had six pairs of feet, and thirteen segments. This process was repeated again and again; the new limbs always developing on the segments last produced, and six new segments being always formed out of the existing penultimate. And by this gradual succession of development, the animal has attained the number of limbs and segments which we now perceive. The antennae and the eyes have likewise passed through successive stages. We have a right to infer the lapse of a period sufficient to produce these changes, for we see their indubitable results; but our inference would only lead us astray, because we have not allowed for a disturbing influence,--that of the Law of Creation. This is the Julus's first hour of life.