Tin: KLOKISSANT LAKI: HASIN. 27 



prodigious mimlirr (if ants; \vliile the case is re\ ersed in Coleoptera, which 

 form nearly one-half the specimens found at ( Iciiin^en and only 1 ,'> per 

 cent, at Florissant. We possess no count of the .specimens found at Rado- 

 iioj, in Croatia, which is regrettable, since the fauna of Florissant appears 

 to agree much better with it than with any other in one or two points, such 

 as the comparatively minor part played by the Coleoptera and the great 

 number of ants; these latter number fifty-seven species iri Radoboj, and five 

 hundred specimens have lieeii found of one of them. Still the comparison 

 can not lie carried very clusely into oiher departments; for instance, only 

 one rhynchophorous coleopteron has been reported from Radoboj, while 

 they are very numerous and rich in species at Florissant, and local causes 

 must have had much to do with the fauna of each of the-e l.x-alities. It is 

 hardly worth while to institute anv inijuiries into the proportion of the 

 Croups repiv>ented at Florissant and in amber, since the nature of the 

 entombment is entirely different. 



Since so far as the Florissant insects are concerned only the lower 

 orders are reported upon in the present volume, it may be worth while to 

 present a rapid sketch of the higher orders, to complete in however imper- 

 fect a way the partial view of the Florissant insect fauna which the volume 



A 



affords. 



About three-fifths of the Coleoptera belong 1 to the normal series and 

 two-fifths to the rhynchophorous division. There are eighty to ninety spec- 

 imens of Carabidae, including, perhaps, twenty-five species; many of them are 

 very tine and perfect, especially in the sculpturing of the elytra. Water- 

 beetles are not so numerous as would be anticipated; indeed, there are very 

 tew specimens, with perhaps half a dozen species; there are no large species 

 such as occur abundantly at Oeningen; the largest of our species, perhaps 

 an Hydrophilus, not exceeding twelve millimeters in length. The Staphv- 

 linida- are rather more numerous than the ground-beetles, with over thirty 

 species, some of them tolerably large. There are half a dozen species of 

 Nitidulidae. Some sixty or more Scarabseidse show considerable, variety, 

 there being nearly thirty species among them. Nearly as many Buprestidae 

 have quite as great variety of form; a considerable number of them are large 

 and nearly all fairly preserved, some remarkably perfect; one species, Chry- 

 -nbothris haydeni, has been described. Elateridae are more abundant, num- 

 bering more than one hundred species, many of them in beautiful condi- 



