CHAP. VIII.] 
ANTIQUITY OF INSECTS. 
107 
now inhabiting Europe. A butterfly is also well preserved, with 
all the markings of the wings ; and it seems to be a Junonia, a 
tropical genus, though it may be a Vanessa, which is European, 
but the fossil most resembles Indian species of Junonia. 
The Eocene formations seem to have produced no in- 
sect remains ; but they occur again in the Upper Cretaceous 
at Aix-la'Chapelle, where two butterflies have been found, 
Cyllo sepulta and Satyrites Reynesii , both belonging to the Saty- 
ridse, and the former to a genus now spread over Africa, India, 
and Australia. 
A little earlier, in the Wealden formation of our own country, 
numerous insects have been found, principally dragon flies (. Libel - 
lula, JEshna) ; aquatic Hemiptera ( Velia Hydrometra) ; crickets 
cockroaches, and cicadas, of familiar types. 
Further back in the Upper Oolite of Bavaria — which produced 
the wonderful long-tailed bird, Archaeopteryx — insects of all orders 
have been found, including a moth referred to the existing genus 
Sphinx. 
In the Lower Oolite of Oxfordshire many fossil beetles have 
been found whose affinities are shown by their names : — Bupres- 
tidium, Curcidionidium , Blapsidium, Melolonthidium, and Brio- 
nidium ; a wing of a butterfly has also been found, allied to the 
Brassolidae now confined to tropical America, and named Palm - 
ontina oolitica. 
Still more remote are the insects of the Lias of Gloucester- 
shire, yet they too can be referred to well-known family types — 
Carabid®, Melolonthidae, Telephoridse, Elateridae, and Curculio- 
nidse, among beetles; Gryllidee and Blattidae among Orthoptera; 
with Libellula, Agrion t JEshna, Ephemera, and some extinct 
genera. When we consider that almost the only vertebrata of 
this period were huge Saurian repliles like the Idhyosaurus , 
Plesiosaurus, and Dinosaurus, with the flying Pterodactyles ; 
and that the great mass of our existing genera, and even fami- 
lies, of fish and reptiles had almost certainly not come into exist- 
ence, w’e see at once that types of insect- form are, proportionately, 
far more ancient. At this remote epoch we find the chief family 
types (the genera of the time of Linnseus) perfectly differentiated 
