S. S. Scudder — Neiv Carboniferous Insects. 297 



while the internomedian vein subdivides numerously, no less than 

 eight final nervures reaching the margin and covering an area, 

 certainly as great as, and apparently considerably greater than, that 

 of the externomedian vein. These singular differences between the 

 Mantidce and Litliomantis. affecting the distribution of the three most 

 important veins of the wing, leave no doubt whatever that the 

 apparent resemblances between the two are only superficial, and 

 that Litliomantis can with no propriety be referred to the Mantidce. 



What place then should be assigned to Litliomantis ? I believe 

 we should compare it with certain other PalEeozoic wings, and 

 notably with Corydalis Brongniarti of Mantell, to which indeed 

 Woodward has himself compared it, giving at the same time an 

 original figure of this interesting fossil. 



This insect is especially interesting from its being the first 

 discovered in Palgeozoic rocks, and that at a time when, to use the 

 words of Audouin, no fossil insect was known either from the Lower 

 Oolite, the Lias, the Keuper, the Muschelkalk, or the New Red 

 Sandstone ; still less in any older rocks. How astonishing then 

 it must have been to find this trace in the Coal ! It was at first 

 supposed to be a plant, and as such was sent by Mantell to Brong- 

 niart, with other remains from Shropshire. Brongniart placed it in 

 Audouin's hands, and he drew attention to it on several occasions, — 

 before the Entomological Society of France, the Academy of Sciences, 

 and the Assembly of German Naturalists at Bonn, asserting its 

 relationship to Neuroptera, where he placed it in the neighbourhood 

 of Hemerohiiis, Semblis, Mantispa, and especially of Corydalis. 

 Mantell accordingly figured it in 1839, in his Medals of Creation, 

 under the name of Corydalis, adding in the second edition in 1844 

 the specific name Brongniarti. The figure given by Mantell is 

 thoroughly bad, not one of the veins being correctly drawn, and 

 giving an altogether false idea of the wing ; that by Murchison, in 

 the various editions of his " Siluria," is apparently made from the 

 same drawing, and therefore almost equally bad ; the anal veins 

 alone are more correct. 



No further notice appears to have been taken of this wing until, 

 in 1874, Swinton, and again, in 1876, Woodward, gave us new 

 illustrations of it, which leave little to be desired. Swinton thought 

 he had discovered the relics of a stridulating organ at the base of 

 the wing, and compared it to similar characteristics alleged to be 

 present on the under surface of the front wing of the modern 

 Gryllacris. He accordingly referred the wing to the Orthoptera, and 

 even to the Locustarian genus Gryllacris. This view cannot jDossibly 

 be maintained, and a more unfortunate comparison could hardly 

 have been made. Swinton himself acknowledges that he could not 

 succeed in finding a species of Gryllacris " with an effective file," 

 and the resemblance of one he figures cannot be ascribed to a 

 stridulating apparatus ; for (1) the " file " he figures could not 

 produce any sound when brought into contact with a similar 

 structure on the opposite wing, since from their course the two 

 would not be brought into the proper relations to each other, or at 



