The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 05 (of 10)Sedgwick, Adam
Science
The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 05 (of 10)
Sedgwick, Adam
Animals
In the Chilognatha, the first Order of Myriapods, the young {70}animal
leaves the egg with three pairs of appendages; the first have already the
form of antennae, the second will form the jaws, but have not yet taken
their proper form, while the third pair will fuse together and alter their
shape so as to form the curious plate that has already been mentioned as
forming the second pair of mouth appendages. Behind the mouth appendages
will come the first three pairs of legs. The whole young animal on leaving
the egg is enveloped in two membranes. These membranes are secreted by the
outside layer of cells in the same way that the shell or exoskeleton of the
animal will be eventually formed, and represent the first two moults of the
animal, which continues to moult its shell every year throughout life.
Of the Chilopoda, the second Order of Myriapods, all the families leave the
egg-shell with the full number of legs, with the exception of the
Lithobiidae, which have seven pairs of legs including the poison-claws. The
Schizotarsia, the third Order, also have seven pairs of legs when hatched.
The legs make their appearance not one by one but in batches (in _Julus
terrestris_ in batches of five). The addition of legs and segments to the
body takes place, not at the end of the body, but between the end segment
and the penultimate.
This is a short sketch of the gradual development of the Myriapoda from the
ovum to the fully-grown animal. It is, I am aware, a short and insufficient
account of all the beautiful processes by which the different organs take
their rise, but space is insufficient here, and too much detail would be
out of place in a work of this nature, which only aims at giving an outline
sketch of the group, which shall be intelligible to the general reader who
has not made a special study of such matters. Before leaving the subject,
however, I must mention a few of the points of interest which are to be
learned from the examination of the course of development which has been
sketched here. One of the greatest puzzles in the natural history of the
Order Chilognatha has always been the double segments, as they are called;
that is, in fact, the possession of two pairs of legs to each segment,
which is, as we have already said, a distinguishing characteristic of the
Order. As we have seen, the Chilognatha at an early stage of existence do
not possess this characteristic, which is only peculiar to the adult
{71}and half-grown forms. Now what does this mean? Does each double segment
in the full-grown Millepede represent two segments which have become fused
together, or is each double segment, so called, a real segment resembling
the segments present in the other Orders (for instance, Chilopoda), which
has grown an extra pair of legs? Both these views have been advocated by
distinguished naturalists. Neither of them is, in my opinion, quite right
when viewed in the light cast on the subject by recent investigations into
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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