234 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June 



" It has been already stated that this granite axis (Chap. II) is 

 really composed of numerous narrow belts, which come up between 

 the schists of the Quebec Group, also that it has a much more 

 northerly extension than represented by Dr. Gesner. On the 

 South-west Miramichi, there are no less than ten distinctly parallel 

 granite belts, with belts of slate and schist between them. It is 

 clear that this arrangement of the granite and slates may exercise 

 a very important influence upon the rocks now under review, as it 

 not only extends the area over which they may be found, but the 

 metamorphic action exhibited by the granite may have effected a 

 material change in the composition and crystalline arrangement of 

 some of the strata." 



DEVONIAN INSECTS. 



A very striking new fact in Prof. Bailey's Report is the dis- 

 covery of insects in the Devonian of St. Johns by Mr. Hartt, — 

 the first instance on record of insects so old. These remains are 

 thus described by Mr. Scudder in a letter to Mr. Hartt: — 



Boston Society of Natural History, 



January 11, 1865. 



"My Dear Mr. Hartt, — I have made as careful an examin- 

 ation as my present circumstances will permit, of your most inter- 

 esting collection of the fossil remain of insect-wings.from Lancaster. 

 There are ten specimens in all, eight of which are reverses of one 

 another, thus reducing the number to six individuals ; of these, 

 one, a mere fragment, belongs, I think, to the same species as 

 another, of which the most important parts of the wing are pre- 

 served, so that we have five species represented among these Devo- 

 nian Insects, and these remains are all, I suspect, composed of por- 

 tions of the anterior wing alone. The data being thus fragmentary, 

 the conclusions cannot be quite so satisfactorily determined as we 

 could wish, but we can still discover enough to prove that they are 

 of unwonted interest. Besides the peculiar interest which attaches 

 to them as the earliest known traces of insect life on the globe, 

 there is very much in themselves to attract and merit our closest- 

 attention. 



" One of them is a gigantic representative of the family of Eplie- 

 merina among Neuroptera, some three or four times the size of 

 the largest species now living, with which I am acquainted. 



" Another borrows some striking points of the peculiar wing-struc- 



