PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS 333 
societies. I wish we had such a society in each of the large cities 
of the state. But such societies come only from the self-sacrificing 
effort of some individual or group of individuals. They cannot 
be forced into activity at will. 
The topic to which I wish to ask vour attention and which I 
present as the annual address provided for at each annual meeting 
may be entitled: 
THE ORIGIN OF THE WINGS OF INSECTS. 
Insects were evidently the first of all animals to acquire the 
power of flight. Except, perhaps, the birds, they have remained 
to the present time the most successful aerial navigators and they 
present certainly the greatest variety of wing structure. They are 
the only creatures among the invertebrate groups that have suc- 
ceeded in developing the power of independent flight. 
From an economic point of view the wings of insects constitute 
a most important fact since it is bv this means that they are 
rapidly distributed from point to point and their destructive effects 
greatly enhanced. ‘To the systematist the wings are of the utmost 
importance since they furnish the basis of classification for all 
divisions of the class. They have been plastic structures easily 
molded by adaptation and changes both by elaboration and 
reduction are numerous. 
It becomes, therefore, a matter of special interest to inquire 
into the structure of these organs and to trace, if possible, the mode 
of their origin. 
While such a study may not add anything to the solution of 
the practical problem of aerial navigation for man it will certainly 
instruct us to learn what we can as to how a problem so difficult 
for man was solved by such apparently insignificant animals. 
Insects began to fly, that is, insects were provided with wings 
and we assume that they could fly, away back in the paleozoic age 
probably millions of years before any such locomotion was pos- 
sible to birds or even the more ancient flying reptiles. 
The most ancient of the fossil remains referred to as a winged 
insect are the Protocimex Silurica of the Ordovician of Sweden 
and next is a primitive orthopteran species formerly thought to be 
closely related to cockroach and called Paleoblattina douvallia 
taken from the middle Silurian.* It may seem to those unfamiliar 
with the methods of biology that inference as to the character of 
these forms from fragmentary fossils is of doubtful value yet so 
firm is our conviction as to’ the certainty of the association of 
certain types of structure that we build up around these little 
fragments, depicting the structure of an insect wing, though separ- 
_ *Dr. E. H. Sellards (Am. Jour. Sci. Vol. XVI. p. 524) states the doubt 
existing as to the accuracy of the reference of these fossils to insects. Later 
appearance of first winged insects does not, however, alter the sequence of 
habit and structure for which this paper argues. 
