EXPEDITION TO T AH ITT 



203 



present time. This is an extremely interesting and significant 

 fact, since it emphasizes the enormous age and singular morpho- 

 logical stability and persistence of the insect type. As Quinet 

 says, in a passage quoted by Scudder in the introduction to his 

 "Tertiary Insects of North America": "So fragile, so easy to 

 crush, you would readily believe the insect one of the latest beings 

 produced by nature, one of those which has least resisted the 

 action of time: that its type, genera, its forms, must have been 

 ground to powder a thousand times, annihilated by the rev- 

 olutions of the globe, and per- 

 petually thrown into the cru- 

 cible. For where is its defense? 

 Of what value its antennae, its 

 shield, its wings of gauze, 

 against the commotions and 

 the tempests which change the 

 surface of the earth? When 

 the moimtains themselves are 

 overthrown and the seas uplift- 

 ed, when the giants of structure, 

 the mighty quadrupeds, change 

 form and habit under the pres- 

 sure of circumstances, w^ll the 

 insect withstand them? Is it 

 which will display most char- 

 acter in nature? Yes! The 

 universe flings itself against a 

 gnat. Where will it find ref- 

 uge? In its diminutiveness, its 

 nothingness." 



W. M. Wheeler. 



Planera longifoUa, A VERY COMMON LEAF IN 

 THE FLORISSANT SHALES 



II.— THE EXPEDITION TO TAHITI. 



j|URING the late winter and early spring of the 

 present year a research expedition to the island of 

 Tahiti was undertaken by the writer under the 

 auspices of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, with fimds contributed anonymously for 

 the purposes of the research. The objects in view were three: 



