The Oldest Fossil Insects

Abstract

MR. S. H. SCUDDER has published (Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 1880, pp. 41, plate 1) a memoir on the Devonian Insects of New Brunswick. The fragments of the six described species were discovered by the late Prof. C. F. Harttin 1862, and have been since 1865 described in several papers by the same author. The new paper is a very detailed and elaborate one, with entirely new and improved figures, and is followed by a number of conclusions, as the final result of his work (Report, Amer. Journ. of Sci., Feb. 1881). The conclusions would be of prominent importance for the history of the evolution of insects, if they could be accepted without reserve. Of course facts and conclusions should be able to stand the most severe test; and that is not the case with this publication. “As the simpler Devonian insects have certain special relations,” he says, “with the Ephemeridæ, their description is preceded by an account of the wing-structure of the modern Mayflies as a basis of comparison” (p. 4).