DERMA PTERA AND ORTHOPTERA 283 



the Florissant Miocene have been referred to the family. The 

 majority of fossil forms, which can in a general way be associated 

 with this family, or superfamily as some regard it, belong to the 

 family Prophalangopsidae, or the subfamily Prophalangopsinae, 

 depending on the rank accorded it, and occur in deposits as old as 

 certain Mesozoic formations of Turkestan. Two living genera have 

 been referred to this assemblage, one Prophalangopsis of India 

 (known only from the unique type taken nearly ninety years ago), 

 and Cyphoderris of the northwestern United States and adjacent 

 Canada. Cyphoderris, however, has by some authors been referred 

 to the gryllacridine subfamily Heniclnae, in which nearly two 

 score existing genera have been placed (the majority of these genera 

 occur only in the Southern Hemisphere, from which several reach 

 northward in the Neotropical Region to Central America and the 

 Greater Antilles). The Henicinae are also regarded as having a 

 single representative within our territory in Cnemotettix, an endemic 

 genus of San Clemente, one of the Californian coastal islands. 

 Except for the two Nearctic genera which have been placed in it, 

 the members of the Henicinae occur in areas which could be asso- 

 ciated as parts of the often postulated "Gondwan aland." There can 

 be no question but that Cyphoderris is a relict genus, and of a line 

 that definitely has long passed its optimum development. It also 

 should be noted that the area where Cyphoderris occurs is also the 

 chief center in the New World of Grylloblatta, which is probably the 

 most aberrant and primitive orthopteron still existing. 



The subfamily Stenopelmatinae, which has fossil representatives 

 as far back as the Lower Miocene of Croatia, is well represented in 

 western North America, but only by the typical genus Stenopel- 

 matus, which apparently developed from a Sonoran center, thence 

 spreading southward at least as far as Costa Rica, and northward 

 over the campestran Great Plains to the Dakotas and Montana, 

 over the Great Basin to southern Idaho, and along the Pacific 

 Coast area to British Columbia, whereas eastward it does not 

 extend beyond the Great Plains. It is a highly specialized apterous 

 burrowing genus, whose existing relatives are of South African and 

 Indian distribution. Its pattern of relationship would indicate the 

 fragmentation, well in the past, of a once widely spread assem- 

 blage adapted to subterranean life. The presence of Sienopelmatus 

 in the New Worid cleariy is not a matter of very recent times. As a 



