FOSSIL INSECTS 67 
3. Insects.—Body divided into segments, head, 
thorax, and abdomen. Head has pair of feelers. 
Thorax bears three pairs of legs. Body protected. 
by a hardened skin. Breathing tracheal. Ex- 
amples: Grasshoppers, Crickets, May-flies, Bugs, 
House-flies, Butterflies and Moths, Beetles, Ants, 
Bees and Wasps. Numerous fossil insects have 
been discovered. In the Old Red Sandstone an old 
form of may-fly has been unearthed; its wings 
measured no less than five inches across their spread. 
The Carboniferous strata yield ancient species of 
White Ants, Crickets, Stone- : 
flies, and Cockroaches. Big 
Dragon-flies “must have flour- 
ished in that Period. The 
Triassic seam known as Cotham 
Stone in England contains an 
abundance of fossil insect wings edocs 
and wing-cases. Grasshoppers  possij wing-shield of a 
throve in the Triassic Period, beetle, from Jurassic 
in addition to dragon-flies and  ""*** 
may-flies. The Purbeck Beds, which are found 
in the Isle of Purbeck, and are of Jurassic Age, 
yield fossils of numerous insects. We owe the 
preservation of some insects to their having been 
caught in resins exuded from trees. The resin 
has become fossilized, and in its fossil condition 
is known as Amber. Perhaps you have seen a 
specimen of amber with a fly embedded in it. In 
Miocene times insect life was probably more varied. 
in some respects than it is now—at least, fossils 
of Miocene insects found in Switzerland seem to 
point to such a conclusion, What a happy hunt- 
Fig. 18. BuPaesron 
