296 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 
ous way under stones. There have been found in rocks 
of the coal period spider-like forms supposed to be allied to 
our modern harvest men, or the cave dweller of Wyandotte 
Cave (Fig. 231, after Cope), whose out-of-door relatives are 
said by Simon, a French entomologist, to burrow several 
feet deep in the porous soil of southern Europe. Associated 
with these fossils are found the remains of undoubted spi¬ 
ders, and in all likelihood they spun silken nests, and thus 
Fig. 230. Fig. 231. 
Podura. Erebomaster. 
anticipated eons ago the light graceful iron work of our 
suspension bridges, crystal palaces and mammoth railroad 
stations. 
But as early as the Devonian period, the time which 
ushered in the Coal epoch, when the ferns and land plants 
made their appearance, and the huge ganoids and sharks 
disported in the seas, at this early date insects resembling 
the May fly, but much larger, fluttered over the low shores 
and sluggish streams of our continent. Since they must 
have had the same organization as the modern Ephemera 
(see Figs. 117,118) it is reasonable to suppose that they had 
the same habits. The first architects, then, so far as fossil 
evidence goes, in their larval stage lived in burrows con- 
8 
