. Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments. Geology. Ch. XV.] MIOCENE STRATA OF SWITZERLAND. 257 richer than that now inhabiting any part of Europe. No less than 844 species are reckoned by Heer from the (Eningen beds alone, the number of specimens which he has examined being 5080. The entire list of Swiss species from the Upper and Lower Miocene together amouut to 1322. xllinost all the living families of Coleoptera are represented, but, as we might have anticipated from the preponder- ance of arborescent and ligneous
. Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments. Geology. Ch. XV.] MIOCENE STRATA OF SWITZERLAND. 257 richer than that now inhabiting any part of Europe. No less than 844 species are reckoned by Heer from the (Eningen beds alone, the number of specimens which he has examined being 5080. The entire list of Swiss species from the Upper and Lower Miocene together amouut to 1322. xllinost all the living families of Coleoptera are represented, but, as we might have anticipated from the preponder- ance of arborescent and ligneous plants, the wood-eating beetles play the most conspicuous part, the Buprestidse and other long-horned beetles being particularly abundant. There are also no less than thirty species of those beetles, of which the larvse feed on the dung of mammalia, implying, says Heer, the existence of a great many more ruminants in the days of the (Eningen Lake than the single one of that class known to us, namely, the Palceomeryx eminens of Meyer. There were also species of the carrion-feeding Silpha; also twenty- four species of water-beetles of the genera Dytiscus, Hydrophilus, &c. The patterns and some remains of the colors both of Coleoptera and Hemiptera are preserved at (Eningen, as, for example, in the an- nexed figure of Harpactor, in which the antennas, one of the eyes, and the legs and wings are retained. The characters, indeed, of many of the Fi»-193- insects are so well defined as to incline us to believe that if this class of the in- vertebrata were not so rare and local, they might be more useful than even the plants and shells in settling chrono- logical points in geology.* Few of the genera of insects are ex- tinct, but many of them imply a geo- graphical distribution widely different from that now obtaining in the same part of the world. Thus, for example, in this Swiss fauna, there were many white ants or Termites, and dragon-flies. of a South African type called Agri
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectgeology, bookyear1868
