Part 9

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--A, _Scutigera rubrolineata_ (after Buffon). B, Tergum and part of a second of the same enlarged to show the position of the stigmata o, o; p, hinder margin of tergum.]

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_.

[Illustration: 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.]

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. _[Greek: kentrôn]_, 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.

_Physical Features._--The _Cordilleras_, or mountain chains of Central America do not form a complete link between the western ranges in the north and south of the continent, for their continuity is interrupted by various depressions, of which the chief is the lacustrine basin of Nicaragua. With these exceptions, they traverse Central America from end to end, their main axis trending from north-west to south-east. They do not, as a rule, rise in sharply serrated ridges or series of volcanic crests, like the Andes, but the central Cordilleras are disposed in a succession of mountain masses, with many lesser chains radiating from them. The principal summits have an altitude of 12,000 and even, in a few cases, of 13,000 ft., and the general character of the ranges is volcanic, many craters being still active. Large tracts of land remained imperfectly surveyed at the beginning of the 20th century, owing to the unhealthiness of the tropical climate, and the dense underwoods which impede exploration. In the northern part of Guatemala, on the Pacific coast of the same country, in British Honduras, along the Segovia river, on the Mosquito Coast, and in the basin of Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan river, there are broad stretches of comparatively flat country. The main line of watershed is everywhere nearer to the Pacific than to the Atlantic, except in southern Costa Rica and Panama, where it is almost equidistant from the two oceans. In consequence, the rivers of the Pacific seaboard are mostly short and swift,--mere mountain torrents, in many instances, until they reach the sands and swamps which border the sea. The rivers of the Atlantic littoral descend more gradually, and by longer channels. The largest of them is the Segovia, in Nicaragua and Honduras, which has a course of 450 m. Lake Nicaragua, the largest inland sheet of water, has an area exceeding 3500 sq. m. There are also several mountain lakes of exceptional interest and beauty, such as Atitlán and Amatitlán, in Guatemala, besides two great land-locked salt-water lakes--the Pearl Lagoon of the Mosquito Coast, and the Carataska Lagoon in Honduras.

[Illustration: Geologic Map of Central America.]

_Geology._--The neck of land which unites the continents of North and South America is not, geologically, the direct continuation of either, but constitutes a third element which is wedged, as it were, between the other two. The folds in the earth's crust which form the Andes and the Western ranges of North America, are not continued along the connecting isthmus, where, on the contrary, the strata are folded from west to east, obliquely across the trend of the continent. It should, however, be noticed that the Andes, as they approach the Caribbean sea, bend round towards the east; and it is probable that the folds of the North American Cordillera similarly bend eastward beneath the volcanic rocks of Mexico. The folds of Central America are tangential to the two arcs thus formed.

By far the greater part of Central America and Mexico is covered by Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits, both sedimentary and volcanic; but the foundation on which they rest is exposed at intervals. From the Rio Grande to the southern declivity of the Mexican plateau the existence of ancient crystalline rocks at the surface is yet unproved, but they probably occur in the Sierra Madre del Pacifico. South of the plateau, in the state of Oaxaca, low mountain ridges composed of granites and gneisses, supposed to be of Archaean age, begin to appear. They strike from west to east, and mark the front of the series of east and west folds which stand _en échelon_ across the Central American region. Between the 15th and 17th parallels of latitude, in the state of Chiapas and in the republic of Guatemala, there is a second group of ridges composed of granites and schists with an eastward trend. In this case the evidence of age is clear, for the rocks are covered by a limestone which is proved to be Pre-Carboniferous. Similar rocks, supposed to be of Archaean or at least of early Palaeozoic age, occupy considerable areas in British Honduras, Honduras and northern Nicaragua, and occur also in Costa Rica and perhaps in Panama; and wherever the strike has been observed, it is approximately from west to east. The presence of Palaeozoic rocks has been proved in Guatemala and the adjacent state of Chiapas, where limestones have been found containing many unmistakable Carboniferous fossils, and below these is a considerable thickness of beds supposed to be Silurian. Nowhere else in the Central American region is there any palaeontological evidence of Palaeozoic rocks.

The Mesozoic series begins with sands and red or yellow clays containing plant remains and possibly of Triassic age; but the occurrence of these deposits is limited to a few small isolated outcrops. Jurassic beds have been found in Mexico but not in Central America. The Cretaceous system, consisting of a lower series of clays, sandstones and conglomerates, followed conformably by an upper series of limestones, covers a considerable area in Chiapas, Guatemala and Honduras, and is found also in Costa Rica. The upper series contains hippurites. The greater part of the eastern half of the Mexican plateau is also formed of Cretaceous beds.

The Tertiary system may be conveniently divided into two divisions. The lower, of Eocene and Oligocene age, consists generally of sand and clays which were evidently laid down near a shore line. The upper division also, including the Pliocene and Pleistocene (which have not yet been clearly distinguished from each other), is usually of shallow water origin; but in the northern part of Yucatan it includes beds of chalky limestone, like those of the Antilles, which may have been deposited in a deeper sea.

It is probable that folding took place at more than one geological epoch, and the whole series of beds up to the Oligocene is involved in the folds. The Pliocene, on the other hand, is usually undisturbed, and the final effort must, therefore, have occurred during the Miocene period, which appears to have been a period of great earth movement throughout the Caribbean region. From the southern extremity of the Mexican plateau to the Colombian border, the strike of the folds--of the Mesozoic and early Tertiary deposits, as well as of the older rocks--is in general from east to west; but there is one considerable exception. On both sides of the deep depression which crosses Honduras from Puerto Cortez to the Gulf of Fonseca, the strike is commonly from north to south. The depression is probably a "Graben" or trough formed by faulting.

The great volcanoes of Mexico and Central America stand upon the Pacific side of the continent, and it is only where the land contracts to a narrow neck that their products spread over to the Caribbean shore. The extent of the volcanic deposits is very great, and over a wide area they entirely conceal the original structural features of the country. The eruptions began towards the close of the Cretaceous period and continue to the present day. The rocks are lavas and ashes, chiefly of andesitic or basaltic composition, but rhyolites and trachytes also occur, and phonolite has been met with in one or two places.

According to R.T. Hill, there is but little geological evidence of any Tertiary or later connexion between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, excepting, perhaps, a shallow opening during the Eocene period. It should, however, be stated that all authorities are not agreed upon this point, and K. Sapper found marls and sandstones which he believes to belong to the Upper Tertiary, lying horizontally at a height of about 7500 ft. in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Unfortunately the fossils obtained from these beds were lost.

_Climate_.--The climate of Central America is subject to the most marked local differences of heat and cold, owing partly to the proximity of two oceans, partly to the variations of altitude which render such territories as the swamps of the coast, or the lowlands of British Honduras and northern Guatemala, totally unlike the alpine regions of Salvador and Costa Rica. The whole area may, however, be roughly divided into a tropical zone (_tierra caliente_), from sea-level to about 1500 ft.; a temperate zone (_tierra templada_), from 1500 to 5000 ft.; and a cold zone (_tierra fria_), above 5000 ft. These figures are, of course, only approximately correct; and it often happens that, at the same elevation, the heat is greater on the Pacific than on the Atlantic versant. The rainy season on the Pacific slope varies in duration from four to six months, between April and December. It lengthens as the altitude increases. On the coast, it corresponds with the prevalence of the south-west monsoon, the tempestuous _Cordonazo de San Francisco_, or "Flagellation of St Francis," as it is called in Mexico, and it is often interrupted by an interval of two or three weeks of fine weather, known as the _Veranillo de San Juan_, or "Little summer of St John." In the rainy season, the morning has usually a clear sky; about two or three o'clock in the afternoon the clouds begin to gather in great cumulus masses; suddenly the lightning flashes out and the rain crashes down; and by evening the sky is clear and starry. North winds are most usual during the dry season. On the Atlantic coast the trade-winds may bring rain in any month, and, owing to the moist atmosphere, the heat is more oppressive. The rainfall may vary in successive years from less than 50 in. to nearly 200 in., owing to the occurrence of cloud-bursts. Frosts are not rare above 7000 ft., but snow seldom falls.

_Fauna_.--The fauna of Central America is more closely connected with the fauna of South than with that of North America. As the region is comparatively small, and its limits conventional, there are comparatively few species that it can claim as peculiarly its own. It is almost entirely free from the presence of animals dangerous to man. Of felines it possesses the jaguar (_Felis onza_), popularly called the tiger; the cuguar (_Felis concolor_), popularly called the lion; the tigrillo (_Felis tigrina_), which is sometimes kept tame; and other species. Several species of monkeys (_Mycetes_ and _Ateles_) are numerous in the warm coast region. The Mexican deer (_Cervus mexicanus_) has a wide range both in the lowlands and highlands. Besides the tapir there are several varieties of wild pig, such as the marrano de monte (_Sus torquatus_) and the jabali or javali (_Sus labiatus javali_). The _Edentata_ are represented by a species of armadillo, the honey-bear (_Myrmecophaga tomandua_), and the _Myrmecophaga didactyla;_ and among the rodents may be mentioned, besides rats, hares and rabbits, the fruit-eating cotorra and tepes-cuinte (_Dasyprocta aguti_ and _Coelogenys paca_), and the troublesome _Geomys mexicana._ The manatee is common in all the larger streams. Much annoyance is caused to the agriculturist by the little marsupial called the tacuacine, or the _Didelphys carcinora,_ its allied species. The bats are so numerous that villages have sometimes had to be left to their undisputed occupancy. In the south-east of Costa Rica the inhabitants are at times compelled to withdraw, with all their live-stock, before the swarms of large migratory vampires which in a single night can bleed the strongest animal to death. Most of the domestic animals--the horse, ox, goat, sheep, pig, dog, rabbit, common fowl, peacock and pigeon--are of European origin, and are popularly grouped together as _animales de Castilla._ For the bird collector there is a rich harvest. The catalogue of the National Museum at Washington shows that Costa Rica alone possesses more than twice as many species of birds as the whole of Europe. Among birds of prey it is sufficient to mention _Corogyps atratus,_ the commonest of the vultures, which acts as a universal scavenger, the _Cathartes aura,_ the beautiful _Polyborus vulgaris,_ and the king of the vultures (_Sarcorhamphus papa_). Neither the condor of the southern continent nor the great eagles of the northern are known. The parrot, macaw and toucan are found in all parts; the crow, blackbird, Mexican jay, ricebird, swallow, rainbird, wood-pecker, humming-bird and trogon are also widely distributed. A bird of the last-named genus, the quetzal, quijal or quesal (_Trogon resplendens_) is of special note, not only from the fact that its yellow tail-feathers. 2 or 3 ft. long, were formerly worn as insignia by the Indian princes, but because it has been adopted as the emblematical figure on the national arms of Guatemala. The gallinaceous order is well represented, and comprises several peculiar species, as the pavo de cacho, and the Peten turkey (_Meleagris ocellata_), which has a bronze sheen on its plumage; and aquatic birds, it is almost needless to add, are unusually numerous in a region so richly furnished with lagoons, rivers and lakes.

Besides the alligator, which swarms in many rivers, the almost endless varieties of Central American reptiles include the harmless boba or chicken-snake, python and black snake; the venomous corali, taboba, culebra de sangre and rattlesnake; iguanas of great size, scorpions, edible lizards and other lizards said to be poisonous. In the rivers and lakes, as in both seas, fish of many kinds abound; turtles and tortoises are exported; and there are valuable pearl and oyster fisheries. Insect life is even richer and more varied. Of the _Coleoptera_, the Camelicorns, the Longicorns, the Curculionids, and the Chrysomelines are said to be best represented, and of the _Lepidoptera_ the prevalent genera are--_Ageronia, Papilio, Heliconia, Sphinx_ and _Bombyx_. There are five species of bees, and the European honey-bee, known as _aveja de Castilla_ or "bee of Castile," has been naturalized. Ants are common, and may sometimes be seen marching in a column 3 or 4 m. long. The mosquito, wood-tick, flea and locust are unfortunately no less plentiful in certain districts, but their distribution varies greatly, the mosquito being almost unknown in parts of Honduras. A curious species of butterfly is the _Timetes Chiron,_ which migrates in countless multitudes from the forests of Honduras to the Mosquito Coast, but is never known to return.

_Flora_.--The flora of Central America ranges from the alpine to the tropical, with the transition from one climatic zone to another. Although its forest growths are, on the whole, inferior in size to those of corresponding latitudes in the eastern hemisphere, it is unsurpassed for beauty, luxuriance and variety. In the volcanic districts, the soil is extremely fertile, yielding, where cultivated and irrigated, magnificent crops of sugar, cotton, rice, tobacco, coffee, cocoa and maize. Indigo is produced in small quantities; sugar yields two or three crops, and maize as many as four, this cereal supplying a chief staple of food. Plantains, bananas, beans, tomatoes, yams, arrowroot, pine-apples, guavas, citrons and many other tropical fruits are also cultivated, while the extensive primeval forests abound in mahogany, cedars, rosewood, ironwood, rubber, gum copal, vanilla, sarsaparilla, logwood and many other dye-woods, medicinal plants, and valuable timbers. Conspicuous amongst the forest trees are the giant ceiba, or pyramidal bombax, and the splendid Coyal palm (_Cocos butyracea,_ L.), with feathery leaves 15 to 20 ft. long, golden flowers 3 ft. high, and a sap which when fermented produces the intoxicating _chicha_ or _vino de Coyol._ In Guatemala occurs the remarkable _Herrania purpurea,_ a "Chocolate tree," whose seeds yield a finer flavoured chocolate than the cocoa itself. The same country is famous for its magnificent orchids, huge arborescent thistles, and a remarkable plant called by the Spaniards _Flor de la Calentura_, "fever flower," from the heat which it is said to emit at the moment of fertilization. Salvador produces an abundance of medicinal plants, notably the so-called Peruvian balsam (_Myrospermum salvatorense_); in Honduras there are immense forests of conifers, resembling those of the Landes in France; in Nicaragua a characteristic tree is the cortes (_Tecoma sideroxylori_) yielding timber as hard as ebony, and noteworthy for the golden blossom with which it is entirely covered after the leaves have fallen.