ARTPRaPaiTA— CENTIPEDES AND INSECTS. 
105 
insects, notably the slight appeal ■which their crushed frag- 
ments make to entomologists, it has not as yet proved 
possible to arrange an exhibited series in such a manner as 
either to indicate the riches of the IMuseum or to give a 
clear vie’#- of the palaeontological history of the Class. 
Here then it can only be stated that, although the earlier 
insects of I’alaeozoic age have a primitive character, still 
they can be connected with some of the Orders into which 
modern insects are divided. Other of those Orders first 
appear at a rather later date. The Orders are : 1. Aptera, 
wingless insects, including the spring-tails, first found in 
the Carboniferous. 2. Qrthoptera, including cockroaches, 
possibly from Silurian, ceftaiuly from Carboniferous onwards; 
earwigs, beginning in Lias:; grasshoppers and the like, from 
Lias onwards. 3. Neuroptera, including may-flies, dragon- 
flies, caddis-flies, and 'w hi tenants ; ancestral forms are found 
as far back as the Devonian if not before ; more modern 
types come in with the Mesozoic Era. 4. Hemiptera, 
including bugS^ plant-lice (Aphidae), and scale insects ; 
an hemipterous, wing has been found in the Upper 
Ordovician of Sweden, and more nearly complete fossils from 
the Carboniferous onwards, while ihodern families liegin in 
Mesozoic rocks. 5. Coleoptera or beetles are not certainly 
known before the Triassic Epoch. 6. Diptera or flies are 
first found in the Lias, but are neither numerous nor readily 
identified before Tertiary times. 7. Lepidoptera, or butter- 
flies and moths, are as yet known only from Tertiary strata. 
8. Hynaenoptera, including bees, wasps, ants, and gall-flies, 
are represented by ants in the Lias, but are mostly found in 
later Tertiary beds. 
In the British series, the Orthoptera of the Coal 
Measures include forms allied to cockroaches, among which 
the specimens of Etcohlattina (Fig. 52) and Leptoblattina 
are noteworthy. Nodules of the same age contain wings of 
the NeuropteraZz7/msirth’s (Fig. 53 a), Brodiea, showing bands 
of colour (Fig. 53 h), and Lithomantis with its expanded pro- 
thorax (Fig. 54), formerly considered an ally of the recent 
praying insect Mantis. The insects found in Liassic rocks 
are for the most part small and insignificant, but there is a 
moderate-sized dragon-fly, Lihdlula, from both Lower and 
Upper Lias; and from the Lower Lias of Barrow-on- Soar 
near Leicester comes a Neuropteron allied to tlie white ants 
and called Falaeotcrmes. Elytra of beetles, sometimes with 
a metallic lustre, are common in the Stonesfield Slate, 
Gallery 
VIII. 
Table-case 
20 . 
