36 



SUMMARY OF IPSWICH RESULTS. 



The following insects from the Denmark Hill beds have been 

 named and described : 



ORDER. 



GENUS. 



SPECIE*;, 



TOTAL : Eight orders, thirteen genera, and twenty-two species, 

 of which seventeen species are new. 



OBS. : Reviewing the above list, the extraordinary range and 

 diversity of the insect fauna of these beds become at once apparent. 

 Did we not know for certain that these fossils occurred in one 

 bed, it would require rather a stretch of the imagination to believe 

 that such was the case. Some of the forms (e.g. Austromy- 

 lacrites and Mesogereon) are little removed from certain Carboni- 

 ferous and Permian insects of the Northern Hemisphere. Others 

 are scarcely distinguishable from forms existing in South Queens- 

 land at the present day. Thus the fauna of the Ipswich Trias embraces 

 within a mere handful of specimens types which range from Carboni- 

 ferous to recent times ! 



We may perhaps best comprehend this if we recall the fact that 

 to-day in Australia Ceratodus and iresh- water Teleosts inhabit the 

 same stream, with Cycads and Leguminosse growing side by side on 

 the same hill. How would some geological student of future ages, 

 versed only in the succession of forms in the Northern Hemisphere, 

 be able to interpret the fossils that he might find side by side in 

 strata laid down at the present day ? The Ipswich fossils show that 



