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All those found in the Northern States are perfectly harmless, the true centipede, whose bite is reputed much more venomous than it really is, being found only in the South. True, some of the centipede group can pinch rather sharply with their beetle-like jaws; and one, our largest and most common species, a brownish red fellow about three inches long and without eyes, can even draw blood if its jaws happen to strike a tender place. When handled it always tries to bite, perhaps out of revenge for the abominably long Latin name given it by its describer. In fact the name is longer than the animal itself--_Sco-lo-po-cryp-tops sex-spi-no-sus_ (Say)--being its cognomen in full. With such a handle attached to it, who can blame it for attempting to bite? Yet, to the scientist up on his Latin, each part of the above name bears a definite and tangible meaning. All the myriapods found in the woods and fields feed upon decaying vegetation, such as leaves, stems of weeds, and rotten wood, and in winter three or four species can usually be found within or beneath every decaying log or stump. One species with very long legs, _Scutigera forceps_ (Raf.), is often found in damp houses or in cellars. It is sometimes called the "wall-sweeper," on account of its rapid ungainly gait, and is even reputed to prey upon cockroaches and other household pests.

They had not been long on their way when they came to a place where the trail ran between two high, smooth-faced bowlders. "These," said their Wosakidi companions, "are the Bumping Rocks. If you step into that narrow passageway between them they will crash together and kill you." The boys started as if to enter, but fell back. The huge rocks came violently together, but did no harm. The feint was made three times, and each time the rocks crashed together and bounded back. The fourth time the boys entered they placed their sacred wands of turquoise and white shell across the gap above their heads and passed through, for these held the bowlders apart. As they emerged on the opposite side they saw the Sun rising from his eastern home and he was yet far away.

Space would fail me if I now sought to carry you off to the cave of Altamira, near Santander, in the north-west of Spain. Here you might see at its best a still later style of rock-painting, which deserts mere black and white for colour-shading of the most free description. Indeed, it is almost too free, in my judgment; for, though the control of the artist over his rude material is complete, he is inclined to turn his back on real life, forcing the animal forms into attitudes more striking than natural, and endowing their faces sometimes, as it seems to me, with almost human expressions. Whatever may be thought of the likelihood of these beasts being portrayed to look like men, certain it is that in the painted caves of this period the men almost invariably have animal heads, as if they were mythological beings, half animal and half human; or else--as perhaps is more probable--masked dancers. At one place, however--namely, in the rock shelter of Cogul near Lerida, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we have a picture of a group of women dancers who are not masked, but attired in the style of the hour. They wear high hats or chignons, tight waists, and bell-shaped skirts. Really, considering that we thus have a contemporary fashion-plate, so to say, whilst there are likewise the numerous stencilled hands elsewhere on view, and even, as I have seen with my own eyes at Niaux in the sandy floor, hardened over with stalagmite, the actual print of a foot, we are brought very near to our palaeolithic forerunners; though indefinite ages part them from us if we reckon by sheer time.

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