1911] Cockerell — Scudder's Work on Fossil Insects 185 



(2.) For the rest, the Palaeozoic insect fauna was too primitive 

 to be placed in existing orders, and was undoubtedly far more 

 homogeneous than the fauna of any later epoch. Whether it 

 should be regarded as a single great group (contrasted with a group 

 including all living insects), divided into several "sections," or 

 should be divided into a number of orders, depends principally 

 on one's conception of the limits of an "order." Even Hand- 

 lirsch does not insist upon the recognition of all his "orders," but 

 expressly states that several of them are provisional. It must also 

 be said that one who felt convinced that numerous valid orders of 

 insects really did exist in the Palaeozoic, might nevertheless 

 hesitate to recognize ordinal divisions made so often in ignorance 

 of the metamorphoses, mouth-parts, and other matters considered 

 of prime importance in classification. 



Scudder described six species from the Lias of England; four 

 are Blattoids, and two (according to Handlirsch) Prohemerobiid 

 Neuroptera. Twenty-three Blattoids were described from the 

 English Purbeck, which Handlirsch treats as uppermost Jurassic, 

 but A. S. Woodward as lowermost Cretaceous. Hylobiites cretaceus 

 Scudder was founded on a fragment of an elytron from the Pierre 

 Shales (Montana Cretaceous) of Manitoba, — a quite unexpected 

 discovery, the Pierre being marine. Corydalites fecundum Scudder 

 is a name for egg-masses found in the Laramie beds of Colorado. 



The 838 Tertiary insects described by Scudder, principally in 

 his great work "The Tertiary Insects of North America" (1890), 

 represent only a portion of those he accumulated and studied. 

 There are in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge 

 very numerous specimens representing undescribed species, which 

 Scudder intended to make known. Some of these have been 

 published in later years by other writers, and many others will 

 eventually be described. It is greatly to be regretted that the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology has never felt able to put a 

 series of Scudder's Tertiary insects on exhibition; they are many 

 of them so beautiful and so well-preserved, that they would excite 

 the interest of all visitors, and no doubt some would be led to 

 take up this neglected branch of entomology. The British 

 Museum, having a much smaller collection from the American 

 Tertiaries, has hastened to exhibit them to the best possible 

 advantage. 



