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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LIII 



all! Such implicit faith in this age of skepticism speaks 

 volumes for the weight of Handlirscli's authority among 

 paleontologists, but the true mori)hologist prefers the 

 direct evidence of his own observ^ation to any " petitio ad 

 auctoritatem" especially when such startlingly revolu- 

 tionary ideas as those which Handlirsch proposes are 

 based upon no firmer foundation than a vague resem- 

 blance which will not even bear the test of close scrutiny. 



When one turns to the published figures of the earliest 

 fossil insects for some light upon the nature of their body 

 structures, his eye is met by a dreary succession of disem- 

 bodied wings, and in the rare instances in which the body 

 parts are also figured, only the vague outlines are given 

 with a nonchalant disregard for the vital details so neces- 

 sary for any phylogenetic study; and one can not help 

 wondering what impression the ''pterophilous" x^aleon- 

 tologists ^vould have of their subject if the tables had 

 boon reversed and they had been presented with merely 

 the vaguest outlines of a series of wings containing no 

 veins or otlier important structures, in the expectation 

 that such figures would be of any vakie for a phylogenetic 

 study! Furthermore, many liviiiu " syiitlietic" types 

 are quite devoid of wings (as it true of iiiiniature forms 

 also) and the studv of these fonns i- in. some cases even 

 more iin].ortnnt than that of the wiim-l.caring ones (e. g„ 

 Tlniriiia. (niilldhhifhi. riyiiiplial lMtM-(.i itera, Lepisma, 

 etc.). l)iU liow arc wc to coniparo them with a series of 

 disembodied wings ? So far as one can judge from the 

 figures of fossil insects, we have living to-day certain 

 lowly organized forms which are in many respects just as 

 primitive as these fossil forms (which are also specialized 

 to some extent) and when the paleontoloo-ist returns 

 again and again to a coiMpari^on witli living forms for 

 an interpretation of fds^i! structures, the siis])icion be- 

 comes a conviction that a study of the primitive cliar- 

 acters of vai'iou- h^wlx- (ifuniii/.cd liviim- iii-cet- i< jii-t as 

 instructive fVoni n plixlduviietic j)(»iiit of \-i(^\v. and is 

 infinitely more ^nti^factory than a lal)oriou> reconstruc- 

 tion of fossil f!-auiiients. 



