DISTRIBUTION 
Ww 
CO 
mn 
described from there 97 species of 48 genera, representing 12 
families or higher groups, 10 of which are regarded as extinct ; 
without including many hundred specimens of cockroaches 
which he found but did not study. In this country, many 
species have been found in the coal fields of Illinois, Nova 
Scotia, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Ohio. 
Many fine fossils of the Jurassic period have been found in 
the lithographic limestones of Bavaria; 143 species from the 
Lias-—four fifths of them beetles—were studied by Heer. 
The Tertiary period has furnished the majority of fossil 
specimens. To the Oligocene belong the amber insects, of 
which goo 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 
; ; : Fic. 294. 
which, entombed in shales derived a 
from volcanic sand and ash, the re- SS 
mains of insects are found in aston- “EZ 
ishing profusion. For Miocene 
Homo roOr witch Is6o Muropean spe- °Poleblarna douniiicr, named 
ee size.—After BRONGNIART. 
cies are known, the C£ningen beds of 
Bavaria are celebrated as having furnished 844 species, des- 
cribed by the illustrious Heer. 
Pleistocene species are supplied by the peats of France and 
Europe, the lignites of Bavaria, and the interglacial clays of 
Switzerland and Ontario, Canada. 
Silurian and Devonian.—The oldest fossil insect known 
consists of a single hemipterous wing, Protocimex, from the 
Lower Silurian of Sweden. Next in age comes a wing, 
Paleoblattina (Fig. 294), of doubtful position,’ from the 
Middle Silurian of France. Following these are six speci- 
mens of as many remarkable species from the Devonian shales 
1 There is some evidence, it should be said, that this species is not an 
insect. Handlirsch denies also that Protocimex is an insect. 
26 
