42 
Psyche 
[Mar. 
for adult Palaeodictyoptera with obscure family relation- 
ships. Since, for reasons given below, I consider their 
ordinal position obscure, I have assigned these nymphs 
to Insecta Incertae Sedis. 
Insectorum gen. indet. anglicanum Handl. 
Plate 6, figures 1 and 5 ; plate 7, figure 1. 
(Palceodictyopteron) anglicanum Handlirsch, 1906, Foss. 
Ins. : 52, pi. 8, fig. 16. 
The specimen on which this species is based is pre- 
served in an ironstone nodule, from Sedgley, England, 
and is now in the U. S. National Museum (Type no. 
38109, Beale Collection). Ilandlirsch’s figure of the fos- 
sil, which is reproduced here (plate 6, figure 1) depicts 
a slender wing or wing-pad, a fragment of another, parts 
of the head (including one compound eye), thorax and 
abdomen. The wing-pad is shown extending laterally 
from the thorax, its longitudinal axis being perpendic- 
ular to the longitudinal axis of the thorax. This figure 
has been referred to several times in entomological 
literature and has caused much speculation about the 
development of the Palaeodictyoptera. Comstock, in his 
“Wings of Insects” (1918), refutes Handlirsch ’s con- 
tention that immature Palaeodictyoptera were aquatic by 
pointing out that it would be ‘ ‘ difficult to imagine insects 
with laterally projecting wing buds, such as these nymphs 
possessed, swimming through the water.” Lemche 
(1940) uses the same figure as a source of important 
evidence to aid his theory of polypliylectic origin of wings 
in insects. Similarly, Forbes (1943) has employed it to 
support his erection of an extinct order, Anasaxia. The 
Palaeodictyoptera differed from the Anasaxia, in part, by 
having nymphs “with the wing-pads extending directly 
out, unlike all other insects.” 
The fossil responsible for alPthis speculation is poorly 
preserved, as shown in the accompanying photograph 
(plate 7, figure 1). So far as I have been able to deter- 
mine, it consists only of a single wing or wing-pad and 
suggestions of the abdomen (plate 6, figure 5). The tho- 
rax and head are not discerifible and till object which 
