TERTIARY RHYNCHOPHOROUS COLEOPTERA 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 
By Samus, H. Scupper. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Although it is evident to any student of fossil insects that even in 
Tertiary deposits we possess but a mere fragment of the vast host which 
must have been entombed in the rocks, it is nevertheless true that we have 
already discovered such a variety and abundance of forms‘as to make it 
clear that there has been but little important change in the insect fauna 
of the world since the beginning of the Tertiary epoch. In the earlier 
Tertiaries we not only possess in profusion representatives of every one of 
the orders of insects, but every dominating family type which exists to-day 
has been recognized in the rocks; even many of the families which have 
now but a meager representation have also been discovered, and though 
many extinct genera have been recognized, no higher groups, with a single 
exception or two, have been founded upon extinct forms. This is one of 
the most striking and prominent facts which confront the student of fossil 
insects. It is the more striking from the delicacy, the tenuity, and the 
minuteness of many of the forms which have been entombed; and the state- 
ment may be enforced by the further fact that the parasitic groups—those 
which are entomophagous—are represented, as well as many of those which 
in the present time show peculiar modes of life. Thus we have representa- 
tives of such microscopic parasitic insects as Myrmar, strepsipterous insects 
have been discovered, the viviparity of the ancient Aphidee has been shown 
probable, the special sextial forms of ants and white ants were as clearly 
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MON XXI 
