WOOD

See also:

• GREEN, A
• GREEN, ALEXANDER HENRY (1832—1896)
• GREEN, DUFF (1791—1875)
• GREEN, JOHN RICHARD (1837—1883)
• GREEN, MATTHEW (1696-1737)
• GREEN, THOMAS HILL (1836-1882)
• GREEN, VALENTINE (1739–1813)
• GREEN, WILLIAM HENRY (.1825–1900)

GREEN  , an urban district in the Tottenham parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, suburban to London, 7 M . N. of St Paul's Cathedral, on the Great Northern railway . Pop . (1891) 25,831, (1901) 34,233 . The name covers a populous residential district lying north of Hornsey and west of Tottenham . To the west lies Muswell Hill, with the grounds and building of the Alexandra Palace, an establishment somewhat similar to the Crystal Palace . It was opened in 1873, destroyed by fire almost immediately, and reopened in 1875 . Muswell Hill II took name from a holy well, of high repute for curative powers, over which an oratory was erected early in the 12th century, attached to the priory of St John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell . WOOD-LOUSE, a name commonly applied to certain terrestrial Crustacea of the order Isopoda (see MALACOSTRACA), which are found in damp places, under stones or dead leaves, or among decaying wood . They form the tribe Oniscoidea and are distinguished from all other Isopoda by their habit of living on land and breathing air, and by a number of structural characters, such as the small size of the antennules and the absence of the mandibular pulp . As in most Isopods, the body is flattened, and consists of a head, seven thoracic segments which are always free, and six abdominal segments which may be free or fused . The " telson " is not separated from the Iast abdominal segment .

The head bears a pair of sessile

compound eyes as well as the minute antennules and the longer antennae . Each of the seven thoracic segments carries a pair of walking legs . The appendages of the abdomen (with the exception of the last pair) are flat membranous plates and serve as organs of respiration . In many cases their outer branches have small cavities opening to the outside by slit-like apertures, and giving rise internally to a system of ramifying tubules filled with air . From their similarity to the air tubes or tracheae of insects and other air-breathing Arthropods these tubules are known as " pseudo-tracheae." The female wood-louse carries her eggs, after they are extruded from the body, in a pouch or " marsupium " which covers the under surface of the thorax and is formed by overlapping plates attached to the bases of the first five pairs of legs . The young, on leaving this pouch, are like miniature adults except that they are without the last pair of legs . Like all Arthropoda, they cast their skin frequently during growth . As a rule the skin of the hinder half of the body is moulted some days before that of the front half, so that individuals in process of moulting have a very peculiar appearance . Some twenty-four species of wood-lice occur in the British Islands . Some, like the very common slaty-blue Porcellio scaber, are practically cosmopolitan in their distribution, having been transported, probably by the uncon- scious agency of man, to nearly all parts of the globe . Equally common is the brown, yellow-spotted Oniscus asellus . Armadillidium vulgare belongs to a group which have the power of rolling themselves up into a ball when touched and resembles the millipede Glomeris .

It was formerly employed in popular

medicine as a ready-made pill . The largest British species is Ligia oceanica, which frequents the sea-shore, just above high- water mark . In many points of structure, Common Vi ood-louse, for instance in the long, many-jointed Oniscus asellus. antennae, it is intermediate, as' it is in habits, between the truly terrestrial forms and their marine allies . Finally, one of the most interesting species is the little, blind, and colourless Platyarthrus hoffmannseggi, which lives as a guest or commensal in the nests of ants . (W . T .