dorsal tracheal sacs furnished with tubes dipping into the pericardial blood space, and opening each by an unpaired spiracle upon the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th leg-bearing somites. This characteristic is accompanied by the complete disappearance of the tergum of the 7th, either by fusion with that of the 8th or by excalation, and by the evanescence of the terga of the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, 11th and 13th pedigerous somites. The preantennal area of the head is not strongly reflexed inferiorly, and the eyes are large and compound. The maxillae are long and have a sensory organ, the palpognaths are long, spiny and composed of five segments, like the primitive Chilopod leg, and the toxicognaths have their basal segments disunited and independently movable. Gonopods duplicated in the male.
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Fig. 9.—A, Scutigera rubrolineata (after Buffon). B, Tergum and |
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| After Latzel, Die Myr öst-ung. Mon. vol. i. “Chilopoda,” Vienna, 1880. | |
| Fig. 10.—Gnathites of Scutigera. | |
| I. Mandibles. | II.Maxillae. |
| III. Palpognaths. | IV. Toxicognaths. |
This subclass contains the single order Scutigeromorpha and the family Scutigeridae. As in the Lithobiomorpha there are fifteen pairs of legs, the gonopods are well developed in both sexes and the young is hatched with only seven pairs of legs. The legs and antennae in the adult are extremely long and many jointed. In habits as well as in structure the Scutigeridae, of which Scutigera is the best-known genus, differ greatly from other centipedes. Although they hide under stones and logs of wood like Lithobius, they are not lucifugous but diurnal, and may be seen chasing their foes in the blazing sun. They run with astonishing speed and have the power of dropping their legs when seized. South of about the 40th parallel of north latitude they are universally distributed in suitable localities. In most species the body only reaches a length of about 1 in.; but twice that size or more is reached by examples of the Indian species Scutigera longicornis.
Some fossils of Carboniferous age have been described as Chilopoda by Scudder, who refers them to two families, Gerascutigeridae and Eoscolopendridae. But until the specimens have been examined by zoologists the genera they are alleged to represent cannot be taken seriously into consideration. Remains of centipedes closely related to existing forms have been recorded from Oligocene beds. (R. I. P.)
CENTLIVRE, SUSANNA (c. 1667–1723), English dramatic writer and actress, was born about 1667, probably in Ireland, whither her father, a Lincolnshire gentleman named Freeman, had been forced to flee at the Restoration on account of his political sympathies. When sixteen she married the nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, and on his death within a year she married an officer named Carroll, who was killed in a duel. Left in poverty, she began to support herself, writing for the stage, and some of her early plays are signed S. Carroll. In 1706 she married Joseph Centlivre, chief cook to Queen Anne, who survived her. Her first play was a tragedy, The Perjured Husband (1700), and she herself appeared for the first time at Bath in her comedy Love at a Venture (1706). Among her most successful comedies are—The Gamester (1705); The Busy Body (1709); A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718); The Basset-table (1706); and The Wonder! a Woman keeps a Secret (1714), in which, as the jealous husband, Garrick found one of his best parts. Her plots, verging on the farcical, were always ingenious and amusing, though coarse after the fashion of the time, and the dialogue fluent. She never seems to have acted in London, but she was a friend of Rowe, Farquhar and Steele. Mrs Centlivre died on the 1st of December 1723. Her dramatic works were published, with a biography, in 1761 (reprinted 1872).
CENTO, a town of Emilia, Italy, in the province of Ferrara, 18 m. S.E. direct from the town of Ferrara; 50 ft. above sea-level; it is reached by road (6 m. to the W.) from the station of S. Pietro in Casale, 15 m. S.W. by W. of Ferrara, and also by a steam tramway (18 m. N.) from Bologna to Pieve di Cento, on the opposite bank of the Reno. Pop. (1901) 4307 (town), 19,078 (commune). It is connected by a navigable canal with Ferrara. It was the birthplace of the painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino). The communal picture-gallery and several churches contain works by him, but none of first-rate importance. A statue of him stands in front of the 16th century Palazzo Governativo. The town was surrounded by walls, the gates of which are preserved. The origin of the name is uncertain.
CENTO (Gr. κέντρων, Lat. cento, patchwork), a composition made up by collecting passages from various works. The Byzantine Greeks manufactured several out of the poems of Homer, among which may be mentioned the life of Christ by the famous empress Eudoxia, and a version of the Biblical history of Eden and the Fall. The Romans of the later empire and the monks of the middle ages were fond of constructing poems out of the verse of Virgil. Such were the Cento Nuptialis of Ausonius, the sketch of Biblical history which was compiled in the 4th century by Proba Falconia, wife of a Roman proconsul, and the hymns in honour of St Quirinus taken from Virgil and Horace by Metellus, a monk of Tegernsee, in the latter half of the 12th century. Specimens may be found in the work of Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1504; Frankfort, 1541, 1544). In 1535 Laelius Capitulus produced from Virgil an attack upon the dissolute lives of the monks; in 1536 there appeared at Venice a Petrarca Spirituale; and in 1634 Alexander Ross (a Scotsman, and one of the chaplains of Charles I.) published a Virgilius Evangelizans, seu Historia Domini nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta.
CENTRAL AMERICA, that portion of the American continent which lies between Mexico and Colombia, comprising the British crown colony of British Honduras, and the six independent republics of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. These seven divisions are described in separate articles. Central America is bounded towards the N. by the Caribbean Sea, and towards the S. by the Pacific Ocean, and extends between 7° 12′ and 18° 3′ N. and between 77° 12′ and 92° 17′ W. It has an area of about 208,500 sq. m., and stretches for some 1300 m. from N.W. to S.E., in a succession of three serpentine curves, reaching its greatest breadth, 450 m., between the Peninsula of Nicoya and the north coast of Honduras, and diminishing to 35 m. in the Isthmus of Panama. The eastern boundary of Central America was usually regarded as identical with that of Costa Rica until 1903, when the republic of Panama was formed out of the northern territories of Colombia; and the more modern definition given above does not command the universal assent of geographers, because it fails to include the whole region up to the natural frontier on the north-west, i.e. the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. It has, however, the support of political and historical considerations, as well as of common usage; and it may therefore be regarded as adequate, although, in respect of climate and natural products, it would be more accurate to define Central America as lying between Tehuantepec and Darien.
