1917] Fossil If! sects 17 



rocks appeared to be few and scattered, the lessons to be 

 learned from palaeoentomology could not be clearly perceived. 

 Today the situation is very different, and evidently our present 

 knowledge of the subject is small compared with that which 

 the next generation will possess. Not only are new localities 

 being discovered every year, but the old ones are for the most 

 part, at least, still as fertile as ever. There already exist in 

 museums many hundred, perhaps thousands, of species of fossil 

 insects which await description; many collected years ago, and 

 strangely neglected. Entomologists certainly have the excuse 

 that they have been more than busy with the existing insects, 

 and with economic problems; but one might have expected 

 that the greatest and most progressive nations would have 

 produced a fair succession of students of fossil forms. England, 

 until now, has neglected the splendid Gurnet Bay collections 

 preserved in the British Museum; in America the Florissant 

 beds were long un worked, and there are still museums where 

 Florissant insects are preserved, without any steps being taken 

 to get them described. In Germany, the revival of active 

 interest in the amber fauna is comparatively recent, and on 

 visiting the famous Oeningen deposit a few years ago, I found it 

 had been neglected since the time of Heer. At Zurich, where 

 Heer's types, and many undescribed species which he did not 

 live to publish, are carefully preserved, there is no one to 

 continue the work. Handlirsch in Vienna has produced his 

 great work on Fossil Insects, which enormously facilitates the 

 labors of all who are interested in the subject, and there is 

 indeed much evidence of a new birth of palaeoentomology; but 

 many more collectors and students are needed. 



Not only this, but for the development of what we may call 

 the philosophy of entomology, of that historical perspective 

 without which the most elaborate monographs are seriously 

 inadequate, it is necessary that the ordinary working entomol- 

 ogist should take account of the fossil members of his group. 

 It is truly extraordinary that when Scudder published his 

 great monograph on the Tertiary Insects of North America, 

 hardly any attention was paid to it, and for many years there 

 was practically no one to give it, or any part of it, the serious 

 and critical study it deserved. The organization of biological 

 and entomological knowledge is rapidly advancing in these 



