CENTIPEDE  , the characteristic member of the

group Chilopoda, a class of the Arthropoda, formerly associated with the Diplopoda (Millipedes), the Pauropoda and the Symphyla, to constitute the now abandoned group Myriapoda . The resemblance between the Chilopoda and the Diplopoda is principally superficial and due to the elongation and vermiform shape of the body, which in both is composed of a number of similar or subsimilar somites not differentiated as are those of Insecta, existing Arachnida and most Crustacea, into series or " tagmata " of varying function . Until 1893 no one doubted the correctness of the assumption that the Chilopoda and Diplopoda were orders of a class Myriapoda of the same systematic status as the Arachnida or Hexapoda . But in that year, R . I . Pocock and J . S . Kingsley independently pointed out that they differ as much from each other as either differs from the Hexapoda; and should, therefore, 669 by General Walker in the passage already quoted believed it to be . Decision after decision of individual instances has made it a settled practice for the Federal government to co-operate with or to supplement the state governments in the gathering of statistics that may furnish a basis for state or Federal legislation . The law has allowed the Federal census office in its discretion to compile and publish the birth statistics of divisions in which they are accurately kept; one Federal report on the statistics of marriages and divorces through-out the country from 1867 to 1886 inclusive was published in 1889, and a second for the succeeding twenty-year period was published in 1908–1909; an annual volume gives the statistics of deaths for about half the population of the country, including all the states and cities which have approximately complete records of deaths; Federal agencies like the bureau of labour and the bureau of corporations have been created for the purpose of gathering certain social and industrial statistics, and the bureau of the census has been made a permanent statistical office . The Federal census office has been engaged in the compilation and publication of statistics of many sorts . Among its important lines of work may be mentioned frequent reports during the cotton ginning season upon the amount of cotton ginned, supplemental census reports upon occupations, on employees and wages, and on further interpretation of various population tables, reports on street and electric railways, on mines and quarries, on electric light and power plants, on deaths in the registration area 1900-1904, on benevolent institutions, on the insane, on paupers in almshouses, on the social statistics of cities and on the census of manufactures in 1905 .

Congress has recently entrusted it with still further duties, and it has developed into the main statistical office of the Federal government, finding its nearest analogue probably in the Imperial Statistical Office in Berlin . (W . F .