123 



ON THE AFFINITIES OF TWO INTERESTING F088IL 

 INSECTS FROM THE UPPER CARBONIFEROUS 

 OF COMMENTRY, FRANCE. 



By R J. TiLLYAKD, M.A., D.Sc, F.L.S., F.E.S., Linnkan 

 Macleay Fellow of the Society in Zoology. 



(With three Text-figures). 



In May, 1917, Mr. Herbert Bolton, M.Sc, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., 

 Director of the Bristol Museum, England, published an interest- 

 ing paper upon the "Mark Stirrup" Collection of Fossil Insects 

 from the Coal-Measures of Commentry (Allier), Central France."^ 

 As is well known, these insect-beds are of Upper Carboniferous 

 Age, and have yielded a very large number of fossils, most of 

 which have been described by Brongniart and Meunier. The 

 chief characteristics of the assemblage may be shortly summed 

 up in the statement that they appear to have been at a stage 

 when the separate Orders known to us to-day were only beginning 

 to be foreshadowed, nearly all the specimens found being of large 

 size, with dense wing venation, and primitive structure of head, 

 thorax, and abdomen. The dominant group was the Blattoidea. 

 No undoubted Holometabolous Insects are known to exist from 

 these beds, nor were any such known from any Palaeozoic rocks, 

 until the discovery of Permochoi'ista, a genus of undoubted 

 Mecoptera, in the Permian Coal-Measures of Newcastle, N.S.W.f 



Eight species are represented in the "Mark Stirrup" Collec- 

 tion. Five of these are Blattoids, and one is a Palseodictyopteron. 

 The other two are of very great interest, and their affinities are 

 certainly problematical enough to require very careful investiga- 

 tion before they can be settled with anything approaching finality, 



* Mem. Proc. Manchester Lit. Phil. Soc, 1916-17, Vol.61, Pt.l, No.2, 

 pp.1 -.32, Pis. i.-v., [May, 1917]. 



t These Proceedings, 1917. 



