III. Palaeozoic Cockroaches : A complete Revision of the Species of Both 

 Worlds, with an" Essay toward their Classification. By Samuel II. Scudder. 



1_ HE study of fossil insects has hitherto furnished very little material toward a knowledge 

 of the general laws which have governed the progress of animal life. The reason of this 

 is not far to seek. The delicate nature of their framework is such that they are never 



- — ' ■"■l.i- .in in such condition as to preclude doubts as 



Erratum for Vol. Ill, p art I No Trr ,,, ., , r 



I, No. Ill, ot the Memo.rs of the Boston Society of Natural History. 

 -by an unfortunate accident (]„■» n e ,1, 

 t^o wrong dif eoverer and to an Z^l^^^g"* *» — «™ been ascribed to 

 ^chtmylacrisparallelum (p. 85, pi 6 fi> G) Wl] Z , ^y™ylacris heros (p. 54, pi. 5, fi„ 9) 



18) were all discovered by Mr R D fact . "P<^ **cribed without a name (p 128 pi % fii' 



I*; *? l0West P^^ctive coal measures, o Z J Z^7 ^ ™ f °" nd » * he ^ »'*<* 

 and the other species came from Campbell' ledll near tte Lt T ? .^ ra **»J*»«* *•*»«. 

 No- XII). l t . due t0 these gentleme P tQ gtate ^ne, Jj^jfft. mte, gl , lte (Rogei , ; 



Cambridge, Dec. 20, 1879. SAMUEL II. SCUDDER. 



statements m l0 ... . 



discusses with greater fulness the cockroaches of the paiaeo/.oie penm,, .„ o'---x 

 contains fully one half the species of insects known from the ancient rocks, and therefore 

 one most likely to he fruitful in results. 



Their remains were first made known by Germar 2 in 1842, in Count Minister's Beitrage 

 ztir Petrafactenkunde, where four species from Wettin were described and figured. Soon 

 afterwards, in his general work on the fossils of Wettin and Lobejiin, Germar redescribed 

 these with as many more ; and additional forms have been published from time to time by 

 Goldenberg, Heer, E. Geinitz and others, until the number of European species at present 

 recognized in the palaeozoic rocks is about forty. To find the original descriptions of these 

 forty species one must look for no less than sixteen different papers by seven different 

 writers; rarely, too, have any of them received any further study after their original 

 description ; it necessarily follows that our knowledge of them is very fragmentary, and a 

 worse showing could be made were we to include the American species, of which descrip- 

 tions of seven have appeared on six separate occasions. 



1 Compare this «itli the ratio of fossil to living mammals, '- Oik- species ha<l been previously described, but as a fern 



as seen in the list given in Murray's Geographical Distribu- leaf. 

 tion of Mammals, pp. 320-64. l . London, 186ti. 



