﻿164 Notices of Memoirs — H. Goss — On Tertiary Insects. 



very valuable memoirs recently publislied by M. Oustalet, Mr. S. 

 H. Scudder, and others. He also drew attention to the fact that the 

 Eev. P. B. Brodie had published a book ^ on this subject so long 

 back as 1845. 



Mr. Goss then made some observations as to the nature of the 

 strata in which insect-remains were most commonly detected, and 

 offered some explanation of the reasons why fossil insects were 

 frequently met with in marine formations. He then reviewed in 

 descending order the principal deposits of the Tertiary period in 

 which in sect- remains had been detected in Great Britain, on the 

 Continent, and in America. 



After alluding to the remains of a few insects from Post-Tertiary 

 strata, including Coleoptera from the Post-Glacial Drift near Col- 

 chester, and the Forest bed and lacustrine deposits in the clifis 

 along the Norfolk coast, and from the lignites of Uznach in Switzer- 

 land, he proceeded to enumerate the orders of insects, and the 

 numbers of each, detected in British and Foreign Tertiary strata. 

 With the exception of a few Coleoptera from the Lower Miocene of 

 Antrim, Ireland, and from the Middle and Lower Eocene of the 

 Isle of Wight, no well-authenticated remains apj)eared to have been 

 found in English strata of this period. On the Continent they 

 appeared to have been found in more or less abundance at (Eningen 

 in Switzerland, Eadoboj in Croatia, Corent and Menat in Auvergne, 

 Siebengeberge on the Ehine, Aix in Provence, and Monte Bolca in 

 Upper Italy. 



The author quoted Sir C. Lyell's description of the Q^ningen 

 strata belonging to the Upper Miocene period. From these strata 

 Prof. Heer obtained 5081 sj)ecimens, comprising 844 species, viz : — 

 Coleoptera, 51S s-pecies; JV^etiropetera, 27 ; Si/meno2}ter a, 80 ; Biptera, 

 63; Jlemiptera, 133; Ortlioptera, 20; Lepidoptera, 3. 



Mr. Goss alluded to the large proportion of Herbivorous Coleop- 

 tera amongst the (Eningen fossils^ and remarked that as they were 

 always more abundant as the Equator was approached, it miglit 

 be inferred that the climate of Qilningen was at the period somewhat 

 more tropical than at the present day, and this was, he said, the 

 opinion of Dr. Heer and M. Oustalet. Allusion was then made to 

 the present geographical distribution of the (Eningen species. 



From the Middle Miocene formation of Eadoboj about 312 species 

 had been detected. In these strata the Hymenoptera were the best 

 represented. The Butterflies were represented by three species, one 

 of which belongs to an extinct genus. 



According to the researches of Bronn, Germar, Giebel, Dr. Heer, 

 Dr. Hagen, and Herren C. von Heyden and L. von Heyden, the 

 lignites of Eott in Siebengeberge near Bonn, belonging to the Lower 

 Miocene, have produced about 90 species. From other deposits of 

 Brown Coal about 125 species had been described by Dr. Hagen, 

 C. von Heyden and others. 

 . Mr. Goss drew attention to the remarkable formation known as 



1 " On the Fossil Insects of the Secondary Eocks," containing many interesting 

 determinations of fossil insect-remains, by the Eev. P. B. Brodie, and Prof. J. 0. 

 Westwood, of Oxfori 



