POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



567 



itants of cities require pure water, and tlie 

 people of Lynn have wisely determined to 

 protect and preserve the abundant supply 

 which still flows from the springs that wa- 

 tered the cattle of the Puritans, and these 

 woods now perform their noblest duty, in 

 furnishing the great city with water, oxy- 

 gen, and sylvan beauty for the repose of its 

 inhabitants. 



Fossil Insects, — The publications of the 

 last ten years on fossil insects comprise, ac- 

 cording to Mr. S. H. Scudder's review, about 

 one third of a complete catalogue of papers 

 on the subject. This literature records some 

 of the most important discoveries that have 

 been made in this field. Passing the dis- 

 covery of Silurian scorpions in several parts 

 of the world, we have, first, Brongniart's dis- 

 covery of the hexapod, Faheoblalthia, in the 

 Silurian of France, as yet the only known 

 true insect in that system. Next is the re- 

 markable Devonian insect fauna in New 

 Brunswick, first announced before 1880, but 

 only fu)ly published, with figures of the 

 species, then. With these must be classed 

 the Devonian myriapods, the earliest known 

 members of that group, elaborated by Peach. 

 In the Carboniferous period we have the 

 abundant forms of Mazon Creek and other de- 

 posits in the United States, which include so 

 extraordinary a number of blattarians that 

 Mr. Scuddcr calls it, so far as its insect fauna 

 is concerned, " the ago of cockroaches." 

 These discoveries are even more than paral- 

 leled by the similar discoveries of M. Brong- 

 niart in France, equally characterized by 

 multitudes of cockroaches. There the prin- 

 cipal discoveries in the Palaeozoic series 

 have been accompanied by the publication 

 of many striking forms which indicate the 

 ancestral types of living insects, or by the 

 better elucidation of types already known 

 but whose significance had not been under- 

 stood. A new era has been begun in the 

 study of the earlier types, in that the sub- 

 jects have been treated in more than a scat- 

 tered way, by fuller discussions, and by at- 

 tempts to systematize. Our knowledge of 

 Mesozoic insects has been likewise much en- 

 larged. Of Tertiary insects, the earliest are 

 to all general intents and purposes identical 

 with those of to-day, although they differ 

 no doubt specifically, and to a considerable 



degree generically. Most of those so far re- 

 covered from temperate regions indicate a 

 warmer climate in their time ; but, taken as 

 a whole, the grand features of insect life ap- 

 pear to have been essentially the same since 

 the beginning of Tertiary times. Of the iu- 

 sects of this period, the Florissant deposit 

 alone of the Western United States is as pro- 

 ductive, if we exclude the insects found in 

 amber, as all the Tertiary fields of Europe 

 taken together. Last year the author found 

 that the strata of a considerable tract of 

 country in western Colorado and eastern 

 Utah were packed with fossil insects as 

 closely as at Florissant. " Whether these 

 new localities will excel or even equal that 

 place in the variety of their fossil treasures 

 is yet to be determined ; but there can hard- 

 ly be any doubt that we shall soon be able 

 in our Western Territories to rehabilitate suc- 

 cessive faunas as successfully as has been 

 done with many of our vertebrate types, and 

 as has not yet been done for insects in any 

 country in the world." Insects have now 

 been found, too, in a score of places in our 

 Carboniferous series. 



Ancient Snpcrstitions in Italy. — In a 



paper at the International Folk-lore Con- 

 gress on Modern Tuscan Tradition, Mr. 

 Charles G. Leiand spoke of a mountainous 

 district, the Romagna Tuscana, between 

 Forli and Ravenna, in which the peasantry 

 have preserved old customs and traditionary 

 lore to a degree for which there was no 

 parallel elsewhere in Europe. There are 

 certain families in which witchcraft is espe- 

 cially cultivated, among whom the old tradi- 

 tions and names of the gods still live. There 

 is ten times as much belief in the super- 

 stitions as in the Catholic religion ; and 

 when people are in trouble, though they first 

 tried the saints, they always found sorcery 

 and spirits best in the end. The basis of 

 the cult was a peculiar polytheism, or a 

 worship of the spirits called foIleUi. These 

 spirits generally bear the names of old 

 Etruscan gods, mostly very little changed? 

 or of the old Roman minor rural deities 

 First among them is Tinia, the folletto of 

 thunder, lightning, and storms. There is 

 also an herb called tigna, identified with 

 this spirit and much used in magic to repel 

 Tinia when he injures crops. The spirit of 



