28 
Bullet m of Natural History Society. 
Great numbers of cockroaches have been found also in the 
American deposits, and Dr. Scudder has for this reason called 
the carboniferous period, so far as insects are concerned, the 
age of cockroaches. 
On the other hand, no cockroaches have been found among 
the Devonian insect remains of St. John, for our insects, ac- 
cording to Dr. Scudder, are neuropteroid, or pseudoneurop- 
teroid, only, or, in other words, are related to the dragon-flies 
and may-flies. 
The St. John Devonian insect wings are now no longer the 
oldest indications of that class of animals known, for at Cal- 
vados, in France, there has been found a solitary wing of a 
cockroach in Silurian sandstone. This wing is not very well 
preserved, but so far as can be judged from the figures of it 
given in several publications, it is the wing of some insect 
similar to a cockroach. 
The existence of wood-boring beetles in the carboniferous 
age had been inferred from the discovery of wood of that 
period which had been bored by larva, in a way similar to that 
of modern beetles. The actual wing-cases of beetles, however, 
have been lately found in the stone coal of- Silesia, by Dr. 
Dathe. 
Even the remains of bug-like insects have been recovered 
from the carboniferous rocks of Missouri, and from the 
Permian of Bohemia, 
Thus we find that the whole four of the lower orders of 
insects, or at least forms out of which they sprang, were liv- 
ing in Palaeozoic times; and the fact that one of our members 
has been able to add to the number of these rare and most 
interesting relics of the early denizens of the air, is creditable 
to his acute observation, and to the association of which he is 
a member, for such remains are not easily detected. 
I would now ask your attention to another point of local 
geology which it appears to me fitting to bring first before 
this society, as the foster-mother of scientific investigation in 
"Our community. 
