116 
Psyche 
[September 
A Pliocene Insect Deposit In Texas. — A few years ago 
numerous insects were found by Dr. Roy Reinhart of Miami 
University in a shale exposed along the Rita Blanca Creek 
near Channing, Texas. My attention was called to these fos- 
sils by Mr. Jack T. Hughes, Curator of Anthropology at the 
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, who 
kindly sent some of the museum specimens to me for my 
examination. 
In May of 1957, with Mr. Hughes, and Mr. James A. Cor- 
bitt and his sons of Daihart, Texas, I spent a day collecting 
at the deposit. The insects occur in several beds of thin 
shales, which resemble closely those at Florissant, Colorado, 
and which were apparently formed of volcanic ash that had 
fallen into a small fresh-water lake. The insects are not 
nearly so numerous at the Channing deposit as they are at 
Florissant, however, and, in general, they are not nearly so 
well preserved. Small flies and beetles are the most num- 
erous types of insects in the shales, but nymphs of dragon- 
flies are not uncommon. Occasionally clusters of nymphs, 
comprising six or more specimens, can be found. The re- 
mains of other organisms, including small fish, also occur 
in the shale. 
The deposit has been generally regarded as being of Late 
Pliocene age. Extensive collecting might result in enough 
good specimens to justify a systematic study of the insect 
fauna. It would certainly be interesting to make a detailed 
comparison between the fauna of this Pliocene Texas de- 
posit and that of the Early Miocene (or Late Oligocene' 
Florissant deposit. — F. M. Carpenter, Harvard Univer- 
sity. 
