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Scolopendrella in habits resembles chilopods, being found in company with Geophilus burrowing deep in light sand under leaves, or living at the surface of the ground under sticks or stones. It is very agile in its movements, and is probably carnivorous. It was considered by Haase to be eyeless, but the presence of two ocelli has been demonstrated both by Grassi and by Schmidt. Whether the pigment and corneous facet are present is not certain. The embryology is entirely unknown (although Henshaw reports finding a hexapodous young one), and it need not be said that a knowledge of it is a very great desideratum. It is most probable that the young is hexapodous, since the first pair of limbs are 4–jointed, all the rest 5–jointed; while Newport, and also Ryder, observed specimens with nine, ten, eleven, and twelve pairs, and Wood-Mason confirms their observations, “which prove that a pair of legs is added at each moult,” and he concludes that the addition of new segments “therefore takes place in this animal by the intercalation of two at each moult between the antepenultimate and penultimate sterna, as in the Chilognatha, and as also in some of the Chilopoda.”


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