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Ants, beetles, flies, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, wasps, bees, moths, butterflies, spiders, scorpions, grasshoppers, locusts, myriapods, canker-worms, wriggling, crawling, creeping, flying, male and female, here they come, and all must be provided for. Nor are these the last.
At the head of the Myriapods, and pre-eminent from a superiorly-developed organisation, stands the genus Cermatia: singular-looking objects; mounted upon slender legs, of gradually increasing length from front to rear, the hind ones in some species being amazingly prolonged, and all handsomely marked with brown annuli in concentric arches.
We find a few stray wings in the Silurian, and a large number of wings and fragments in the Devonian, but it is in the Coal-forest that we find the first great expansion of insect life, with a considerable development of myriapods, spiders, and scorpions. Food was enormously abundant, and the insect at least had no rival in the air, for neither bird nor flying reptile had yet appeared.
The lower Annulosa worms, myriapods, &c. are characterized by the great numbers of segments of which they respectively consist, reaching in some cases to several hundreds; but as we advance to the higher Annulosa centipedes, crustaceans, insects, spiders, we find these numbers greatly reduced, down to twenty-two, thirteen, and even fewer; and accompanying this there is a shortening or integration of the whole body, reaching its extreme in crabs and spiders.
Beal says: "The real food is composed of 24.3 per cent of animal matter and 75.7 per cent of vegetable matter, or a trifle more than three times as much vegetable as animal. The animal food is chiefly made up of insects, with a few spiders, myriapods, snails, and small vertebrates, such as fish, salamanders, tree frogs, mice, and birds.
These myriapods are harmless, excepting to woodlice, spiders, and young cockroaches, which form their ordinary prey. They are rarely to be seen; but occasionally at daybreak, after a more than usually abundant repast, they may be observed motionless, and resting with their regularly extended limbs nearly flat against the walls.
Flowers fertilised by humming-birds. By insects. Provision in some flowers to prevent insects, not adapted for carrying the pollen, from obtaining access to the nectaries. Stories about wasps. Humming-birds bathing. Singular myriapods. Ascent of Pena Blanca. Tapirs and jaguars. Summit of Pena Blanca.
When we think of the diet of the Amphibia we are reminded of the other prominent representatives of land life at the time. Snails, spiders, and myriapods crept over the ground or along the stalks of the trees, and a vast population of insects filled the air.
More than a thousand species of insects, and nearly a hundred species of spiders and fifty of myriapods, are found in the remains of the Coal-forests. From the evolutionary point of view these new classes are as obscure in their origin, yet as manifestly undergoing evolution when they do fully appear, as the earlier classes we have considered.
Some derive the Insects from the Myriapods, some the Myriapods from the Insects, and some think they evolved independently; while the rise of the spiders and scorpions is even more obscure. But how can we see any trace of an Annelid ancestor in the vastly different frames of these animals which are said to descend from it? It is not so difficult as it seems to be at first sight.
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