458 Miscellaneous. 
before I found abundant specimens of Blepharisma, very distinctly 
characterized by their form and their rose-colour. Here again, 
and during a torrid heat, there had been life latent for several 
months, whether of animalcules, or of their germs, or of their cysts. 
— Comptes Rendus, November 7, 1881, p. 750. 
The Tertiary Lake-basin of Florissant, Colorado. 
By 8. H. Scupprr*. 
Mr. Scudder describes in this paper the position, characters, pale- 
ontology, and age of the remarkable lacustrine deposits of Floris- 
sant, Colorado, and illustrates the subject with a map. His obser- 
vations in the region were made in 1877, along with Mr. A. Lakes, 
whose geological notes are incorporated, and also Mr. F. C. Bow- 
ditch. Tho lake-basin, nearly nine miles long, according to the 
map, occupies a low depression among the mountains at the southern 
extremity of the Front Range of Colorado, “at no great distance 
from Pike’s Peak,” and sends its arms up the valleys on either side. 
The beds are whitish, drab, and brownish shales below, with fine and 
coarse sandstone above ; and, besides, trachyte occurs in the adjoin- 
ing promontories and along the margin of the basin. The material 
of the coarser beds directly above the shales, from a locality visited 
by Mr. Scudder (south of the house of Mr. A. Hill), according to 
microscopic investigations by Mr. M. E. Wadsworth, is tufaceous ; 
and the shalesare ‘“ simply the finer material of the tufas laid down 
in lamine of various thickness and coarseness.” The shales at this 
place are about 22+ feet thick. The fossils from the Florissant 
shales include :—of Hymenopterous insects, several species of Apidee 
and Andrenidz, about 30 of Vespide or wasp-like Hymenoptera, 
50 species or more of ants (mostly Formicide, with some Myrmi- 
cide and Poneride) represented by about 4000 specimens, about 
80 species of Ichneumonidée, over 100 other species of Hymenopters ; 
of Lepidopters perhaps a dozen species; of Dipters, some thousands 
of specimens and a large number of species, among them 1000 speci- 
mens of Bibionide, and “ a vast host of Muscidée and allied kinds ;” 
of Coleopters, over 300 species of the normal series, and about 120 
of the Rhynchophorous section ; of Hemipters, more than 100 species 
of the Heteroptera and 65 of Homoptera; of Orthopters, many 
species; of Neuropters, largely the Phryganids, of which there are 
15 or 20 species, 6 species of the Termites family, and others; of 
spiders, 30 species, all Araneze ; one Myriopod, an Julus ; of mollusks, 
only one species, that a Planorbis; of fishes, 8 species, all described 
by Cope, except one by Osborn, Scott, and Speir ; of birds, several 
feathers, a single tolerably perfect Passerine bird, described by J. 
A. Allen, under the name Palcospiza bella, and a plover, Charedinus 
Sheppardianus, described by Cope. 
* Pp. 279-800 of the Bulletin, vol. vi. no. 2, of the U.S. Geol. and 
Geogr. Survey, under Dr. F. V. Hayden (Dept. of the Interior). 
