The Washington times., 1922-10-15
By Or. w. II. BalIOu

y menJ OI AkrlCultu1e Ok the
University Of Hawaii have
Just finished making IN exhaus-
tive study Of the habits Of the Thousand
logger" or common house centipeds. They
find that instead Of being the foe Of house,
wives, as long has been supposed, II II .
true friend indeed. ~. -I.
Everybody knows what the Thousand
logger" looks like. And the impulse of
everyone Is to swat or tread on the little
creature an soon a. Il scuttles into sight.
This is largely because Of q common be-
lief that It Il poisonous. Some think that
its bite il dsngerousi others that It some
how carries venom on its feet and poisonsI
the skin on which It walks.
This is all wrong. According to the
report of the Hawaiian entomologists
there is no poison on the centipede's feet,
and its bite is not much more harmful
than that Of the ordinary mosquito,
Far from niolestihg the creatures the
intelligent housewife should protect II,
they say, and even provide II with little
sticks of wood to breed In. For there 10
no household creature, according to the
report just completed, 90 beneficial -
this same centipede or Myriapod, - Il Il
termed scientifically.
1t is the worst foe of the cockroach and
the Croton bug. It Il strictly carnivorouS,
and it lives on all kinds Of insects. II
eats moths, mosquitoes, flies, and In fact
all the pests that infest the average house.
1t does bite, that u true. But II will
not bite unless frightened or rnolested,
and the minute quantity Of acid sub
stance, which it injects with its bite, is not
enough ~ cause more than slight irTita-
ton in the human being. II 10 0 peculiar
acid substance, inasmuch as II produces
sleep in the insect bitten; or st least, II
not sleep, kind of paralysis. When the
centipede has pounced upon a roach or
whatever else it is hunting, It gives It this
stupefying bite and then tucks two or
three of its legs around it. Having plenty
more legs to walk on, it goes on to the
next victim, stupefes it, and tucks It up
in two or three more legs. After II has
used up all the available legs for this
purpose, retaining enough to walk on, Of
course, 1t scurries back to its nest, like a
woman coming home from market, and
carrying bunch of well-flled baskets of
food.
A centipede in a house, the Hawaiian
scientists found, can account for one hun
dred times its weight per day in pestifer-
Gus bugs! ,4
The centipede does have one extremely
bad habit. If tits caught out in the open
and startled, and there Is a woman
around, IL will head Immediately for her.
This is not because of any peculiar ami
mostly against or attraction of the sex.
But the, centipede dimly sees the outline
of her skirts, and this outline means just
one thing to II, and that is cover. So II
heads for this cover to hide. g..
Another exceedingly strange thing
about the centipede is that science is
unable to determine whether It Is q worm
or an insect. It is one of the oldest of
creatures on earth. Nature seems orig
inally to have created 1t for the purpose
Of insect hfe--a mission which, as the
Hawaiian scientists point out, it has never
forgotten, 49,.
of years ago, long before the Carbonif-
erous Are, when coal was formed. The
Myriapods seem to be the connecting link
between fishes and the first animals with
true backbones. ''-
This means that, In way Of speaking,
the centipede 10 responsible for the back
bone Of man and al vertebrae.
They swarmed out Of the shallow seas
upon land those millions upon millions of
years ago, and spread out over ell the
world. Although there are many species,
all Of them look pretty much the same,
and have changed little during the count
less centuries. In the Temperate Zones
they seldow grow more than an inch iong,
but In the Tropics they achieve Q full foot