The Bristly Millipede Some of the loveliest things in the
country are the smallest, and among the most diminutive of the creatures visible to the naked eye I commend to notice a great friend of mine, Polyxemis lagurus, the bristly millipede. For years I have found great pleasure in observing it. This attractive little creature is very widespread in this country, but it needs a watchful eye to see it on the bark of a tree or among the lichen patches of a mellow brick wall. Carl von Linne must have detected it, for he named it in his Sysiona Naiurae. It is often less than one-eighth of an inch in length, and glides easily, with a tractor-like motion, over the surface of wall or bark, its thousand bristles protecting it from attack and making it distasteful to creatures many times its size who might well, otherwise, have been its enemies. It loves the sunshine. Although I have found it all through late spring and summer, it remained for a young naturalist twelve years old to surprise me by showing me a speci- men active in the bright sunshine of noon on Christmas Day. You may see it any sunny day now if you look for it, gliding from a lichen patch like the upturned housemaid's brush of some Lilliputian mansion or browsing contentedly in its microscopic pastures.
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