24 SCUDDER ON THE DEVONIAN 



Very few persons seeing it would recognize it as an insect, yet it was the first insect found 

 by htm which he recognized as such. It is on this account that I have selected this of 

 all the devonian wings to commemorate his discovery. It comes from plant-bed No. 8, 

 the highest in the series. 



^& 



VIII. Xenoneuea antiquoeum. PL 1, figs. 5, 6, 7. 



Xenoneura antiquorum Scudd., Can. nat. geoL, (n. s.) iii, 206, fig. 5 (1867); — Ib., 

 Geol. mag., IV, 387-88, pi. 17, fig. 5 (1867) ; — Ib., Daws., Acad, geol., 2d ed., 525-26, 

 fig. 184 (1868); — Ib., Amer. nat., ii, 163, fig. 1 (1868); — Ib., Geol. mag., v, 174, 

 176 (1868). 



Mentioned without name, as the fifth species, in my letter to Professor Hartt : On the 

 devonian insects of New Brunswick, p. 1 ; Bailey, Obs. geol. south. New Br., 140 ; Amer. 

 jotirn. sc, (2) xxxix, 357; Can. nat. geol., (n. s.) ii, 235; Trans, ent. soc. Lond., (3) ii, 

 117, — all in 1865 ; see also Amer. journ. sc, (2) xL, 271. 



This fossil is represented by a fractured basal fragment of a wing, probably including a 

 little more than half of it. It is the smallest of the devonian insects, the wing having 

 probably measured only a little more than 18 mm. in length. It was long and slender, 

 broadest near the middle, and probably tapered to a rounded but somewhat produced 

 extremity, as in certain species of Dictyoneura. The costal border in the preserved por- 

 tion (probably a little more than half of the whole) is gently convex ; probably beyond 

 the middle it is straight nearly to the tip, as represented on the plate ; the portions of the 

 lower margin preserved indicate that this was more strongly arcuate but not full next the 

 base ; the direction of the margins and the course of the distant veins indicate, as stated, 

 a tapering tip, which was probably rounded, and in no way angular. 



The marginal vein forms the border. The mediastinal vein is simple and gently arcu- 

 ate ; at first it ciirves gently in the opposite sense to the margin, from which it is some- 

 what distant, and with which it is connected by faint, nearly transverse, or, away from the 

 base, gently oblique cross veins, not very closely approximated. At the beginning of the 

 second quarter of the wing, it is about as distant from the scapular vein as from the mar- 

 gin, and thereafter runs nearly parallel with the latter, but with a slightly stronger curve, 

 to a little past the middle of the wing ; where it suddenly terminates in a cross vein bent at 

 a right angle, the upper half a little the longer, by which it is connected with the veins 

 on either side of it; a somewhat similar terrfiination of this vein is shown in Goldenberg's 

 figure of Dictyoneura libelluloides. 



The scapular vein is one of the most important in the wing. In the part of the wing 

 preserved it is very straight. Next to the base it is in exceedingly close proximity to the 

 mediastinal, diverging gently from it by the curve of the latter at about the end of the 

 basal fifth of the fragment, until it is as distant from the mediastinal as the mediastinal is 

 from the margin, and again gradually approaches it ; it is about equidistant from the bor- 

 der at the end of the fragment, and where the mediastinal diverges from it ; beyond the 

 tip of the mediastinal, it probably continues its straight course at first, or even trends 

 slightly upward to take the place of the mediastinal vein, until it is in close proximity to 

 the border, and then follows nearly the curve of the latter, gradually approaching it until 



