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 Libytheinse, a group now scantily 

 represented, though widely distributed over the earth. The 

 group is 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 Carabidse and 

 Staphylinidse. 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 is 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 



