22 B. C. ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Many fine fossils of the Jurassic period have been found in the lith- 

 ographic limestones of Bavaria. One hundred and forty-three species 

 from the Lias — four-fifths of them beetles — were studied by Heer (1). 



The Tertiary period has furnished the majority of fossil specimens. 

 To the Oligocene belong the amber insects, of which 900 species are 

 known from Baltic amber alone, and to the same epoch are ascribed the 

 deposits of Florissant and White River in Colorado and of Green River, 

 Wyoming. These localities — the richest in the world — have been made 

 famous by the monumental works of Scudder. At Florissant there is 

 an extinct lake, in the bed of which, entombed in shales derived from 

 volcanic ash and sand, the remains of insects are found in astonishing 

 profusion. For Miocene forms, of which 1550 European species are 

 known, the Oeningen beds of Bavaria are celebrated as having furnished 

 844 species, described by the illustrious Heer (1). 



On our Western Coast it is interesting to know that quite a rich 

 stratum of fossil-insect remains are located in the Tertiary lake deposits 

 of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, there being in all something 

 like 135 species, which have been described by the three distinguished 

 palaeoentomologists, Scudder, Cockerell and Handlirsch. In 1910 

 Handlirsch (2), dealing with a collection of IZ specimens of fossil insects 

 disinterred by Lambe of the Canadian Geological Survey, and submitted 

 to him for investigation by Dr. A. P. Low, Director of the Survey, made 

 a valuable contribution to the study of Canadian fossil insects. The 

 localities in which these insect fossils of British Columbia have been 

 found is confined to a comparatively small area, extending from the 

 Similkameen in the south to Quesnel in the north, and include the 

 deposits along the Nicola River, the Tulameen River one and a half 

 miles above Princeton and opposite Vermilion Clifif, Tranquille River, 

 Horsefly Mine, Ninemile Creek, Quilchena. One specimen is recorded 

 from Vancouver Island, an unidentified specimen of the Chrysomelid 

 genus Microrhopala described by Chagnon. 



Of the 7i specimens collected by Lambe, Handlirsch distributed 

 them among the systematic groups as follows: Orthoptera (Acridioidea), 

 1; Coleoptera, 4; Hymenoptera — Ichneumonidae, 1; Rhaphidioidea, 1 

 Diptera — Bibionidae, 54; Ptychopteridae, 1; Tipulidae, 2; Empidae, 1 

 Hemiptera — Pentatomidae, 1 ; Gerridae, 1 ; Homoptera — Cercopidae, 3 

 Insecta incerta sedis, 6. In all there were 41 species, of which 20 

 belonged to the genus Penthetria of the dipterous Bibionidae. 



Including the Tertiary insects previously made known from British 

 Columbia, chiefly in the works of Scudder — which Handlirsch (2) for 

 the sake of completeness inserted in his list — the species are systematic- 

 ally distributed among various families by this author as follows : 



Orthoptera — Acridioidea. 1. ? Mastacinae, 1. 



