296 



HALF HOUKS WITH INSECTS. [PAcnAKT>. 



ous way under stones- There have been found in rocks 

 of the coal period spider-like forms supposed to be allied to 

 our modern harvest men, or the cave dweller of Vfyandotte 

 Cave (Fig. 231, after Cope), whose out-of-door relatives are 

 said b}' Simon, a French entomologist, to- burrow several 

 feet deep in the porous soil of southern Europe. Associated 

 with these fossils are found the remains of undoubted spi- 

 ders, and in all likelihood they spun silken nests, and thus 

 Fig. 230. Fig. 231. 



Podura. Erebomaster. 



anticipated eons ago the light graceful iron work of our 

 suspension bridges, crystal palaces and mammoth railroad 

 stations. 



But as early as the Devonian period, the time which 

 ushered in the Coal epoch, when the ferns and land plants 

 made their appearance, and the huge ganoids and sharks 

 disported in the seas, at this early date insects resembling 

 the May fly, but much larger, fluttered over the low shores 

 and sluggish streams of our continent. Since they must 

 have had the same organization as the modern Ephemera 

 (see Figs. 117, 118) it is reasonable to suppose that they had 

 the same habits. The first architects, then, so far as. fossil 

 evidence goes, in their larval stage lived in burrows con- 



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