FEBRUARY 5.
On Saturday about eight in the evening a large centipede
dropped from the ceiling upon my dinner-table, and was immediatley cut
in tw exact halves by
one of the guests. As it isa
reported in Jamaica that these reptiles when thus divided will
re-unite again, or if separated will reproduce their missing members,
and continue to live as stoutly as ever, I put both parts
into a plate, under a glass cover. On Sunday they continued to
about their prison with considerable agility, although the
tail was evidently much more lively and full of motion than the
head. On Monday the head was dead, but the tail continued to
run about, and evidently endeavoured to make its escape, although
it appeared not to know very well how to set about it, nor to be
perfectly determined as to which way it wanted to go. On
Wednesday at twelve o'clock its vivacity was a little abated, but
only a little : the wound was skinned over, and I was waiting
anxiously to know whether it would subsist without its numskull
till a good old age, or would put forth an entirely spick and span
new head and shoulders, when on going to look at the plate on
Thursday morning, lo and behold ! the dead head and the living
tail had diappeared together. I suppose some of the negro
servants had thrown them away through ignorance, but they one
and all most stoutly deny having so much as toricbed the plate ;
and as a paper case pierced in several places had been substituted
for the glass cover, some persons are of opinion that the tail
made its escape through one of these air-holes, and carried its
head away with it in its forceps. Be this as it may, gone they
both are, and I am disappointed beyond measure. I have proclaimed
a reward for the bringing me
another; but I am told that these reptiles are only found by accident.
