DESCRIPTION OF AN EXTINCT PALEOZOIC INSECT. 49 



ARTICLE II. 



DESCRIPTION OF AN" EXTINCT PALEOZOIC 

 INSECT, AND A REVIEW OF THE FAUNA 

 WITH WHICH IT OCCURS. 



BY G. F. MATTHEW, D. Sc, F. R. S. C. 



Read 4th May, 1897. 



The fortunate preservation of the remains of land-animals, 

 consisting of snails, myriapods, crustaceans and insects, in the 

 finer beds of a delta deposit of the earlier Pala?ozoic time, near 

 St. John, N. B., in Canada, enables us to form some conception 

 of the inhabitants of the land in that far-distant age. 



A knowledge of these early types of land animals is of the 

 greatest interest to naturalists, so many of whom hold the doc- 

 trine of the continuity of life, and of the evolution of the later 

 forms of animals fi'om the earlier. This has induced the writer to 

 assemble in one view the figures, scattered through various pub- 

 lications, that present the forms of these ancient land animals, 

 so far as they are known. This land fauna lived eons before 

 the Carboniferous age, and even before the later Devonian, and 

 includes types which are strange to the student of the Carbon- 

 ifei'ous land fauna, and still more so to the investigator of modern 

 species. 



In presenting figures of these types we have added to them 

 two objects, claimed to be insect wings, of equal or greater 

 anticjuity ; and have also inserted the form of a gigantic insect 

 that lived in the Carljoniferous age, which was found at Com- 

 mentry, in France, and has been described by C. Brongniart. 

 This insect, which was nearly a foot and a half long, is given for 

 comparison of the venation of its wings with those of the insects 

 of this ancient fauna of eastern Canada. 



