So 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



Fly in Amtjer. 



A two-winged fly with wings delicately fringed and covered 

 wnth hairs. It appears to have affinity with our modern 

 wheat-midge or hessian-fly. It is shown on a scale of twenty- 

 five times the actual size. 



Photo by] [W. 11 



young, the 

 young of 

 the o i 1 - 



beetle was already parasitic on bees, and the 

 present races of gall-wasps already made galls. 



Fossils of the long-horned grasshoppers first 

 make their appearance in the mesozoic rocks, but 

 are more abundant in the tertiarics, where several 

 existing genera are represented. A cricket has been 

 discovered in the lias, but a number of species 

 have been found in tertiary rocks. Dragon-flies, 

 as already indicated, have been found in numbers 

 in the carboniferous rocks, and many of these are 

 remarkable for their large size — far exceeding that 

 of any Insects of the present time. One dragon- 

 fly i was of such a size that, did it exist tO;^day, 

 people might have cause for the alarm they pretend 

 in the presence of a modern " horse-stinger," so- 

 called. This creature, which was found in the 

 carboniferous beds of C o m m e n t r y , France, 

 measured more than two feet across the extended 

 wings. It is shown on a much reduced scale in 

 the illustration on page 79. It had long, narrow 

 wings, and the hind-body was terminated by a 

 pair of very long and slender " tails," such as we 

 see to-day in the may-fly. Only the adult winged 



1 Mcganeura monyi. 



winged adult forms of these Insects have 

 been found as fossils, which supports our 

 suggestion that more ancient forms with 

 less firm structures decomposed before they 

 could become fossilized. 



The remains of Insects become more 

 frequent in the secondary epoch, and abun- 

 dant in the tertiary, or cainozoic, epoch. 

 According to Scudder, these remains indicate 

 conditions of existence very similar to those 

 we find around us in the present day. Some 

 of the ants had already evolved to sucli an 

 extent that certain of the females showed 

 modification into the worker caste, and a 

 similar state of affairs existed among the 

 termites in the separation of the soldier 

 caste. The grasshopper family had developed 

 its musical apparatus, the green-fly produc- 

 ed living ^ 



Photos by] 



Fi.iES IX Amber. 



These examples, which are magnified twenty-five 

 times, show the natural order to which they 

 belong by the character of the two wings and 

 (in the upper photograph) by tlie little b.dancers 

 behind them. 



