Contributions to Fossil Entomology

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Abstract
Summary: T he microscopical examination which I have been compelled to make of so many hundreds of fossil insect-remains, for the most part in a fragmentary condition, from the Lower Plirhecks of Dorset, although beyond measure tedious from the unsatisfactory results afforded hy the nature of the specimens, has still enabled me to arrive at some results, and to form a general comparison of these insect-deposits with those which I similarly investigated whilst preparing the plates of Mr. P. B. Brodie's work on the fossil insects of the Wiltshire Purbecks, &c. If we take into consideration the small, and even minute size of the great majority of the insects, and indeed of the whole of the Coleoptera , which have been passed under review, the idea, that we have before us the wreck of an Insect Fauna of a temperate region, is at once raised; for although it would be rash to assert that a mass of remains of the existing tropical insects might not be accumulated in which a large quantity of minute beetles and flies would not be present, yet I cannot conceive any process, either arising from currents of water, or chemical dissolution of insect matter, which would carry off or destroy the many gigantic forms of insect life always occurring in the tropics.

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