1930] 
Geological History of Insects 
15 
A REVIEW OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE INSECTS. 1 
By F. M. Carpenter. 
During the past ten years, subsequent to the publica- 
tion of Handlirsch’s general account of fossil insects in 
Schroder’s “Handbuch der Entomologie” in 1920, many 
important and unexpected specimens have been discovered. 
So profound an effect have these new fossils had upon in- 
sect paleontology that I venture to invite your attention 
this evening to a review of our present knowledge of the 
geological history of the insects, and to a discussion of the 
main problems which await solution. 
First, let us consider what important discoveries the past 
decade has witnessed. 2 The Carboniferous rocks, unfor- 
tunately, have not made a very large or an unusual con- 
tribution. The British coal measure insects, comprising 
sixty species, have been monographed by Bolton in a work 
which has added a great deal to our knowledge of certain 
extinct orders. Pruvost has described a splendid series of 
new fossils collected at the famous Commentry beds in the 
central plateau of France, and Bolton has published on a 
smaller assemblage of insects from the same locality and 
now contained in the British Museum. In this country, 
Cockerell has written a comprehensive account of the Car- 
boniferous insects of Maryland. But interesting as all these 
coal measure insects are, they seem to be quite typical of 
those which have previously been found in this horizon, 
a Annual address of the retiring president of the Cambridge En- 
tomological Club, Jan. 14, 1930. Contribution from the Entomological 
Laboratory of the Bussey Institution, Harvard University, No. 330. 
2 Although Handlirsch’s account of fossil insects in the “Handbuch” 
was published in 1920, it did not include the results of several impor- 
tant works which appeared a few years earlier. For this reason, the 
latter (as Tillyard’s “Mesozoic Insects of Queensland”) are mentioned 
here. 
