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Her childhood produced upon her the effect of a time when there had been nothing around her but millepeds, spiders, and serpents. When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as she had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean's daughter, and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her.
Some fragments of an aqueduct were still to be seen at intervals on the right hand, where they looked like portions of gigantic millepeds severed by the scythe of time; next, on the left, came another tower, whose dark and ruined pile barred the sky as with a huge black stake; and then the remains of another aqueduct spanned the road, assuming yet greater dimensions against the sunset glow.
These, contrasted with the dark hue of the other parts, and its tri-partite tail, attract the eye as the insect darts rapidly along. Like the chelifer, it shuns the light, hiding in chinks till sunset, but is actively engaged throughout the night feasting on the acari and soft-bodied insects which assail books and papers. Millepeds.
I didn't use to realize this, and often wished I had a few more legs. But God's will be done. Who are you?" Maya introduced herself. The other one nodded and moved some of his legs. "I am Thomas of the family of millepeds. We are an old race, and we arouse admiration and astonishment in all parts of the globe. No other animals can boast anything like our number of legs.
However, since the catastrophe two successive springtides had softened the ground, and in a corner of the trapezium, behind an enormous stone that was becoming tinted with the green of moss, and beneath which were haunts of woodlice, millepeds, and other insects, a little patch of grass had grown in the shadow. I sat on the stone and bent over the grass.
Some fragments of an aqueduct were still to be seen at intervals on the right hand, where they looked like portions of gigantic millepeds severed by the scythe of time; next, on the left, came another tower, whose dark and ruined pile barred the sky as with a huge black stake; and then the remains of another aqueduct spanned the road, assuming yet greater dimensions against the sunset glow.
Each man had his collar, but the chain was for all; so that if these four and twenty men had occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds.
Eight is their limit, so far as I know." "You are tremendously interesting. And your color is so queer. Have you got a family?" "Why, no! Why should I? What good would a family do me? We millepeds crawl out of our eggs; that's all. If we can't stand on our own feet, who should?" "Of course, of course," Maya observed thoughtfully. "But have you no relations?" "No, dear child.
By day it remains concealed in its den, whence it issues at night to feed on larvæ and worms, devouring cockroaches and their pupæ, and attacking the millepeds, gryllotalpæ, and other fleshy insects. Mr. EDGAR L. LAYARD has described an encounter between a Mygale and a cockroach, which he witnessed in the madua of a temple at Alittane, between Anarajapoora and Dambool.
"There are of course mosquitoes certain in all such places," he says, "but far more dangerous than these annoying insects are the poisonous scorpions and millepeds, of which I have collected some splendid specimens, scorpions six inches and millepeds a foot long."
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