Volume 159 — NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.

The Centipede. The centipede is not quite nice; He lives in idleness and vice; He has a hundred legs; He also has a hundred wives, And each of these, if she survives, Has just a hundred eggs; And that's the reason if you pick Up any boulder, stone or brick You nearly always find A swarm of centipedes concealed; They scatter far across the field, But one remains behind. And you may reckon then, my son, That not alone that luckless one Lies pitiful and torn, But millions more of either sex— 100 multiplied by x— Will never now be born. I daresay it will make you sick, But so does all Arithmetic. The gardener says, I ought to add, The centipede is not so bad; He rather likes the brutes. The millipede is what he loathes; He uses fierce bucolic oaths Because it eats his roots; And every gardener is agreed That, if you see a centipede Conversing with a milli—, On one of them you drop a stone, The other one you leave alone— I think that's rather silly. They may be right, but what I say Is, "Can one stand about all day And count the creature's legs?" It has too many, any way, And any moment it may lay Another hundred eggs; So if I see a thing like this¹ I murmur, "Without prejudice," And knock it on the head; And if I see a thing like that² I take a brick and squash it flat; In either case it's dead. A.P.H.