. The testimony of the rocks; . eetleshave been found associated, together with a small Tinea.,—a creature allied to the common clothes-moth, and a Plias-mia^—a creature related to the spectre insects. But thegroup is an inconsiderable one; for insects seem to haveoccupied no very conspicuous place in the carboniferousfauna. The beetles appear to have been of the wood andseed devouring kinds, and would probably have found theirfood among the conifers; the PhasmidcB and grasshopperswould have lived on the tender shoots of the less rigid HISTORY OF PLANTS. 83 plants their contemporaries; the Tin
. The testimony of the rocks; . eetleshave been found associated, together with a small Tinea.,—a creature allied to the common clothes-moth, and a Plias-mia^—a creature related to the spectre insects. But thegroup is an inconsiderable one; for insects seem to haveoccupied no very conspicuous place in the carboniferousfauna. The beetles appear to have been of the wood andseed devouring kinds, and would probably have found theirfood among the conifers; the PhasmidcB and grasshopperswould have lived on the tender shoots of the less rigid HISTORY OF PLANTS. 83 plants their contemporaries; the Tinea^ probably on ligne-ous or cottony fibre. Not a single insect has the systemyet produced of the now numerous kinds that seek theirfood among flowers. In the Oolitic ages, however, insectsbecome greatly more numerous, — so numerous that theyseemed to have formed almost exclusively the food of theearliest mammals, and apparently also of some of the flyingreptiles of the time. The magnificent dragon-flies, the car-Fig. FOSSIL DRAGON-FLY. Solenhofen. nivorous tyrants of their race, were abundant; and we nowknow, that while they were, as their name indicates, dragonsto the weaker insects, they themselves were devoured bydragons as truly such as were ever yet feigned by romancerof the middle ages. Ants were also common, with crickets,grasshoppers, bugs both of the land and water, beetles, two-winged flies, and, in species distinct from the preceding 84 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL carboniferous ones, the disgusting cockroaches. And forthe first time amid the remains of a flora that seems to haveliad its few flowers, — though flowers could have formed noconspicuous feature in even an Oolitic landscape, — wedetect in a few broken fragments of the wings of butterflies,decided trace of the flower-sucking insects. Not, however,until we enter into the great Tertiary division do thesebecome numerous. The first bee makes its appearance inthe amber of the Eocene, locked up hermeticall
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