Hearts and Brains.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20364, 23 July 1934, Page 6

Hearts and Brains.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

THHE HEART of a centipede or of a millipede, too small and delicate to be seen with the naked eye, is a pulsating organ that runs along the whole length of the body. These creatures have brains and complete nervous systems. In some centipedes and millipedes the bursting of the eggshell, before the young come out into the world, is helped by a special kind of spike on the back of the young one’s head. A study of fossil centipedes and millipedes has added to knowledge of their place in the scheme of creation. They were amongst the first to people the land. Their fossils appear in rocks of vast antiquitv. Some have been found in the Old Red Sandstone that Hugh Miller loved to write about in Scotland. Centipedes and millipedes were abundant in the Carboniferous Period. In a fossil of that remote time, found in a tree-stump in a fossil forest, the eyes, head and legs of a centipede were seen under a microscope. The origin of centipedes and millipedes has fascinated some investigators. .One theory is that they came from the insects: another is that they and the insects had a common ancestor, which resembled the strange, crawling, lowly, archaic, caterpillarlike Peripatus, a survival of the past, which has New Zealand as one of its homes.