In the Carboniferous, as in the Devonian age, insects existed, and in greater numbers. The winged insects of the period, so far as known, belong to three of the nine or ten orders into which modern insects are usually divided. Conspicuous among them are representatives of our well-known domestic pests the cockroaches, which thus belong geologically to a very old family. The Carboniferous roaches had not the advantage of haunting our larders, but they had abundance of vegetable food in the rank forests of their time, and no doubt lived much as the numerous wild out-of-door species of this family now do. It is, however, a curious fact that a group of insects created so long ago, should prove themselves capable of the kind of domestication to which these creatures attain in our modern days; and that, had we lived even so far back as the coal period, we might have been liable to the attacks of this particular kind of pest. Another group, represented by many species in the coal forests, was that of the May-flies and shad-flies, or ephemeras, which spend their earlier days under water, feeding on vegetable matter, and affording food to many fresh-water fishes--a use which they no doubt served in the coal period also. Some of them were giants in their way, being probably seven inches in expanse of wing, and their larvæ must have been choice morsels to the ganoid fishes, and would have afforded abundant bait had there been anglers in those days. Another group of insects was that of the weevils, a family of beetles, whose grubs must have found plenty of nuts and fruits to devour, without attracting the wrathful attentions of any gardener or orchardist.