s as test objects, we wonder
how many really know what a Podura is?

In preparing the following account I have been under constant
indebtedness to the admirable and exhaustive papers of Sir John Lubbock,
in the London "Linnaean Transactions" (vols. 23, 26 and 27).
Entomologists will be glad to learn that he is shortly going to press
with a volume on the Poduras, which, in distinction from the Lepismas,
to which he restricts the term Thysanura, he calls Collembola, in
allusion to the sucker-like tubercle situated on the under side of the
body, which no other insects are known to possess.

The group of Bristle-tails, as we would dub the Lepismas in distinction
from the Spring-tails, we will first consider. They are abundant in the
Middle States under stones and leaves in forests, and northward are
common in damp houses, while one beautiful species that we have never
noticed elsewhere, is our "cricket on the hearth," abounding in the
chinks and crannies of the range of our house, and also in closets,
where it feeds on sugar, etc., and comes out like cockroaches, at night,
shunning the light. Like the cockroaches, which it vaguely resembles in
form, this species loves hot and dry localities, in distinction from the
others which seek moisture as well as darkness. By some they are called
"silver witches," and as they dart off, when disturbed, like a streak of
light, their bodies being coated in a suit of shining mail, which the
arrangement of the scales resembles, they have really a weird and
ghostly look.

The most complicated genus, and the one which stands at the head of the
family, is Machilis, one species of which lives in the Northern and
Middle States, and another in Oregon. They affect damp places, living
under leaves and stones. They all have rounded, highly arched bodies,
and large compound eyes, the two being united together. The maxillary
palpi are greatly developed, but the chief characteristics are the
two-jointed stylets arranged in nine pairs along each side of the
abdomen, reminding us of the abdominal legs of Myriopods. The body ends
in three long bristles, as in Lepisma.

The Lepisma saccharina of Linnaeus, if, as is probable, that is the name
of our common species, is not uncommon in old damp houses, where it has
the habits of the cockroach, eating cloths, tapestry, silken trimmings
of furniture, and doing occasional damage to libraries by devouring the
paste, and eating holes in the leaves and covers