DISTRIBUTION 391 
enteen being known; yet Florissant has contributed eight of 
these, a few of which are marvelously well preserved (Fig. 
300), as appears from Scudder’s figures. Two of the Floris- 
sant specimens belong to Libytheinz, a group now scantily 
represented, though widely distributed over the earth. The 
group 1s structurally an archaic one, and its recent members 
(forming only one eight-hundredth of the described species 
of butterflies) are doubtless relicts. 
Taken as a whole, the insect facies of Tertiary times was 
apparently much the same as at present. The Florissant fauna 
and flora indicate, however, a former climate in Colorado as 
warm as the present climate of Georgia. 
Quaternary.—The interglacial clays of Toronto, Ontario, 
have yielded fragments of the skeletons of beetles to the extent 
of several hundred specimens, about one third of which 
(chiefly elytra) were sufficiently complete or characteristic to 
be identified by Dr. Scudder, who has found in all 76 species 
of beetles, representing 8 families, chiefly Carabidae and 
Staphylinidz. All these interglacial beetles are referable to 
recent genera, but none of them to recent species, though the 
differences between the interglacial species and their recent 
allies are very slight. As a whole, these species “indicate 
a climate closely resembling that of Ontario to-day, or perhaps 
a slightly colder one. . . . One cannot fail, also, to notice that 
a large number of the allies of the interglacial forms are re- 
corded from the Pacific coast.” (Scudder.) The writer, who 
has studied these specimens, has been impressed most by their 
likeness to modern species. It 1s indeed remarkable that so 
little specific differentiation has occurred in these beetles since 
the interglacial epoch—certainly ten thousand. and _ possibly 
two or three hundred thousand years ago. 
General Conclusions.—Unfortunately, the earliest fossils 
with which we are acquainted shed much less light upon the 
subject of insect phylogeny than one might expect. The few 
Devonian forms, though synthetic indeed as compared with 
their modern allies, are at the same time highly organized, or 
