THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE Ml. VOL. IX. 



No. v.— MAY, 1892. 



ODBIG-insTJ^L .A.S,TIOXj:K!S. 



I. — On a Neuropterous Inskct from the Lower Lias, 



Barrow-on-Soar, Leicestershire. 



By Henry Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S., P.G.S., 



of the British Museum (Natural History). 



(PLATE v.) 



SO much attention has been bestowed of late years on fossil 

 organic remains from rocks of all ages, that it must appear 

 surprising to find so little notice has been directed to the Insect- 

 remains from the British Secondary rocks. 



It is now nearly fifty years since that veteran geologist, the Rev. 

 P. B. Brodie, M.A., F.G.S., published his modest little 8vo. volume 

 entitled "A History of the Fossil Insects in the Secondary Eocks of 

 England " ^ which is still the only separate work of the kind extant. 

 Numerous Insect-remains have, it is true, been described by Prof. J. 

 0. Westwood, Mr. H. E. Strickland, Prof. J. P. Blake, Mr. A. G. 

 Butler, and Mr. S. H. Scudder, from English rocks of Secondary 

 age ; and Mr. Herbert Goss has given an excellent summary of our 

 knowledge of the Mesozoic Insects in the Proceedings of the Geo- 

 logists' Association (1879). 



Although fossil insects are rarely well-preserved in our Secondary 

 rocks, yet it cannot be doubted that they were extremely abundant 

 during this period, their remains having been obtained from the 

 Wealden beds of Hastings, Tunbridge, and Maidstone; the Purbeck 

 beds of Durl'ston Bay, of Swanage, and Ridgway, Dorset, have also 

 long been known to yield such organisms, many of them havino- 

 been figured and described by Brodie and Westwood ; whilst the 

 "Insect-limestone" in the Purbeck strata of the Vale of Wardour 

 in Wiltshire, was formerly the happy hunting ground which 

 furnished the materials for Brodie's History of Fossil Insects. 

 Traces of Insects have likewise been obtained from the Kimmeridge 

 Clay, the Oxford Clay, Forest Marble, Great Oolite, Stonesfield 

 Slate, and lastly from the Lias and Eheetics. 



Mr. Herbert Goss, F.G.S.,^ in his excellent summary of the 

 Insect Fauna of the Secondary Period, writes as follows : — 



" The Lias and RhEetic formations are the oldest rocks of this 

 period in which fossil insects have been detected in England. In 



^ London, 8vo. pp. xviii. and 130, with 11 plates, 1845. 



- See "The Insect Fauna of the Secondary or Mesozoic Period, and the British 

 and Foreign Formations of that Period in which Insect-remains have been detected," 

 by Herbert Goss, F.L.S., F.G.S., Proc. Geologists' Association, 1879, vol. vi. 

 pp. 116-150. 



decade III. — VOL. IX. NO. v. 13 



