Ch. XV.] MIOCENE STRATA OF SWITZERLAND. 257 



richer than that now inhabiting any part of Europe. No less than 

 844 species are reckoned by Heer from the (Eningen beds alone, the 

 number of specimens which he has examined being 5080. The entire 

 list of Swiss species from the Upper and Lower Miocene together 

 amouut to 1322. xllinost all the living families of Coleoptera are 

 represented, but, as we might have anticipated from the preponder- 

 ance of arborescent and ligneous plants, the wood-eating beetles play 

 the most conspicuous part, the Buprestidse and other long-horned 

 beetles being particularly abundant. There are also no less than 

 thirty species of those beetles, of which the larvse feed on the dung 

 of mammalia, implying, says Heer, the existence of a great many 

 more ruminants in the days of the (Eningen Lake than the single one 

 of that class known to us, namely, the Palceomeryx eminens of Meyer. 

 There were also species of the carrion-feeding Silpha ; also twenty- 

 four species of water-beetles of the genera Dytiscus, Hydrophilus, &c. 



The patterns and some remains of the colors both of Coleoptera 

 and Hemiptera are preserved at (Eningen, as, for example, in the an- 

 nexed figure of Harpactor, in which the antennas, one of the eyes, 

 and the legs and wings are retained. 

 The characters, indeed, of many of the Fi »- 193 - 



insects are so well defined as to incline 

 us to believe that if this class of the in- 

 vertebrata were not so rare and local, 

 they might be more useful than even 

 the plants and shells in settling chrono- 

 logical points in geology.* 



Few of the genera of insects are ex- 

 tinct, but many of them imply a geo- 

 graphical distribution widely different 

 from that now obtaining in the same 

 part of the world. Thus, for example, 

 in this Swiss fauna, there were many 

 white ants or Termites, and dragon-flies. 

 of a South African type called Agrion, 

 besides several Indian and American _ 



Harpactor macuhpes, Heer. Upper 



forms referable to various orders. Miocene, osningen. 



To account for the perfect state of the 

 specimens, Heer supposes that the insects which sank to the bottom 

 of the water may have been killed by mephitic gases which rose from 

 the lake, and which were connected with the volcanic eruptions of 

 which some of the products are seen at Hochgau, and which are 

 believed by Swiss geologists to have taken place in the Upper Mio- 

 cene period. 



* See Heer's beautiful figures and descriptions of CEningea beetles, &c., in the 

 Haarlem Transactions. Naturkundige Verhandelingen van der Hollandsche Maat- 

 schappij der TVetensch, &c. Haarlem, 1862. 

 17 



