392 Professor Pictet on the Insects found in Amber. 



ancient seas. Many other animals, having neither skeleton 

 nor hardened integuments, have certainly lived in these same 

 seas, but their remains have not been preserved in the same 

 formations. 



The articulata are not sufficiently solid to have been pre- 

 served in all deposits, nor so delicate as to have been always 

 destroyed ; accordingly, we find them in a fossil state only in 

 some special localities, where the formations are composed 

 of very fine-grained rocks, rather soft, and which, by decom- 

 posing into thin plates, permit us to observe the impressions 

 upon them. These deposits have, in general, been produced 

 by sudden cataclysms, and the beautiful manner in which the 

 organic remains are preserved, is partly owing to the animals 

 having been fossilized immediately after their death. These 

 localities, so valuable for the palaeontological study of this 

 class, are too rare not to leave immense blanks in its history. 

 Besides, it too often happens that the most essential charac^ 

 ters of the animals are altogether concealed, and that, conse- 

 quently, we can form only very imperfect notions of the true 

 zoological relations of many species* 



Yellow amber, or Succin (the Electrum of the ancients, 

 Bernstein of the Germans), often incloses the remains of in- 

 sects and vegetables, and the examination of it appears des- 

 tined to furnish materials of the highest importance, and to 

 complete, in an essential department, the palaeontological his- 

 tory of the articulata, the difficulties of which I have just 

 glanced at. The great number of species which have been 

 already found in this substance, the admirable preservation 

 of the greater part of the individual specimens, the transpa- 

 rency of the material, which enables us to see sometimes the 

 most delicate organs almost as well as in living nature, are 

 so many circumstances which impart interest to the study of 

 the fauna and flora of amber. We may, indeed, by a suitable 

 examination, hope to arrive at the knowledge of a numerous- 

 population, animal and vegetable, whose natural relations 

 may be fixed with a precision which it is impossible to obtain 

 in regard to the other deposits in which they are found. 



It is, at the same time, only a short while since the import- 



