294 



PSYCHE, 



[January 1890, 



lated material covering the whole field, 

 like the excellent series published by 

 Goss ; others more or less partial or 

 local, like the lists of Lacoe and Brong- 

 niart, or the dictionaries of Lesley and 

 Miller, or some papers by Bi'odie and 

 Goss ; still othei-s which pass the whole 

 subject under one general review, like 

 one of my own and those of Maurice 

 and Vidal y Careta, — all these have 

 served to advance in one way and 

 another an interest in this department 

 of science and to bring more or less 

 oi'der out of previous confusion or mis- 

 understanding. The most pretentious 

 of these undertakings is the general 

 systematic survey entrusted to me by 

 Zittel for his "handbook of paleontol- 

 ogy, " in which for the first time since 

 Pictet and Giebel, or for more than 

 thirtv years, a systematic technical 

 treatment of the entire series of fossil 

 insects, myriopods, and arachnids was 

 attempted, including tolerably full defi- 

 nitions throughout the paleozoic series 

 and to some extent in the later, with a 

 fullness and variety of illustration never 

 before given. To gather together, as 1 

 believe is there done, even the smallest 

 references and weld all into a connected 

 whole would have been almost impossi- 

 ble, had I not begun at least twenty 

 years ago a systematic card reference- 

 catalogue in which every such allusion 

 great or small is entered and which has 

 been constantly perfecting and kept up 

 to date. For English readers, the text 

 of my contribution to Zittel's Handbuch 

 was also published by our Geological 

 survey, with a somewhat fuller treat- 



ment of the tertiary series, but without 

 illustrations. 



And now, in bringing this too long 

 address to a close, you may perhaps ask 

 what the outlook is for the future. I 

 venture to predict that it will be quite 

 as brilliant as the past. In the first 

 place, publications bringing the whole 

 known series of discoveries in systematic 

 order up to date, like that just pub- 

 lished, always have al tendency to bring 

 out new facts and discoveries. Again, 

 new localities are being found, and in 

 fact, the public has as yet only tasted of 

 the good things of Commentry and 

 Florissant, the richest known fields in 

 the world, respectively, for carbonifer- 

 ous and tertiary insects. When Brong- 

 niart tells us that he has six hundred 

 cockroaches alone at Commentry, we 

 may well hold our breath, and it is not 

 to be believed that he will delay, longer 

 than he is compelled by the very richness 

 of his field, the publication of the results 

 of his study on the other insects whose 

 classification has already been outlined 

 by him. As to Florissant and our other 

 tertiary fields, the work of illustrating 

 the insects, for which thousands of 

 drawings are already made, has, owing 

 to unavoidable engagements, marched 

 far ahead of text; but a volume, with 

 descriptions of over five hundred insects, 

 including mainly the lower orders, and 

 with over eight hundred figures, is 

 nearly ready for the printer. It will 

 show tliat Florissant alone is as pro- 

 ductive as all the tertiary fields of Eu- 

 rope taken together, if we exclude the 

 insects found in amber. Yet during the 



