Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Science
Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.
Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Butterflies, Fossil
If we enquire where the allies of these nine fossil butterflies are now
living, we must seek for those of four of them in the East Indies; for
those of three of them in America, and especially in that part lying on
the confines of the tropical and north temperate zones; for those of one
of them in the north temperate zone of both Europe-Asia and America; and
for those of one in the Mediterranean district; for those of two only,
therefore, out of the nine, or less than one-fourth, in the region where
the fossils were discovered. Analyzing this point still further, we
notice that three out of the four species whose living allies are to be
sought in the East Indies come from the older deposits of Aix, and that
only one of the two remaining Aix species shows special affinities to
American types; we thus find here, as among other insects and among the
plants, a growing likeness to American types as we pass upward through
the European tertiaries.
The study of the floras of the European tertiaries has proceeded so
far that in most cases we are able to find, in the very beds where the
butterflies occur, plants which we may reasonably judge to have formed
the food of these insects in their earlier stages. In but a single
instance is the family of plants, upon which it was necessary, or almost
necessary, to suppose the caterpillar fed, entirely absent from tertiary
strata; and since this family is the Cruciferæ, which in its very nature
could scarcely have left a recognizable trace of its presence, the
exception has no force.
After presenting these facts, for convenience sake, in a tabular form, we
will pass on to the enumeration of those fossils which have been referred
to butterflies, but whose exact position is still unsettled.
TABULAR VIEW OF FOSSIL BUTTERFLIES.
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