The conclusions drawn from the insects are for the most part in perfect harmony with those derived from the plants, but they have a somewhat less tropical and less American aspect, the South European types being more numerous. On the whole, the insect fauna is richer than that now inhabiting any part of Europe. No less than 844 species are reckoned by Heer from the Œningen 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 amount to 1322. Almost all the living families of Coleoptera are represented, but, as we might have anticipated from the preponderance of arborescent and ligneous plants, the wood-eating beetles play the most conspicuous part, the Buprestidæ and other long-horned beetles being particularly abundant. The patterns and some remains of the colours both of _ Coleoptera_ and _Hemiptera_ are preserved at Œningen, as, for example in _Harpactor_ (Fig. 145), in which the antennæ, one of the eyes, and the legs and wings are retained. The characters, indeed, of many of the insects are so well defined as to incline us to believe that if this class of the invertebrata were not so rare and local, they might be more useful than even the plants and shells in settling chronological points in geology. Middle or Marine Molasse (Upper Miocene) of Switzerland.—It was before stated that the Miocene formation of Switzerland consisted of, first, the upper fresh-water molasse, comprising the lacustrine marls of Œningen; secondly, the marine molasse, corresponding in age to the faluns of Touraine; and thirdly, the lower fresh-water molasse. Some of the beds of the marine or middle series reach a height of 2470 feet above the sea. A large number of the shells are common to the faluns of Touraine, the Vienna basin, and other Upper Miocene localities. The terrestrial plants play a subordinate part in the fossiliferous beds, yet more than ninety of them are enumerated by Heer as belonging to this falunian division, and of these more than half are common to subjacent Lower Miocene beds, while a proportion of about forty-five in one hundred are common to the overlying Œningen flora. Twenty-six of the ninety-two species are peculiar. Fig. 145: Harpactor maculipes. Fig. 146: Olica Dufresnii.