some of the flying reptiles of the time. The magnificent dragon-flies, the carnivorous tyrants of their race, were abundant; and we now know, that while they were, as their name indicates, dragons to the weaker insects, they themselves were devoured by dragons as truly such as were ever yet feigned by romancer of 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 carboniferous ones, the disgusting cockroaches. And for the first time amid the remains of a flora that seems to have had its few flowers,--though flowers could have formed no conspicuous feature in even an Oolitic landscape,--we detect 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 these become numerous. The first bee makes its appearance in the amber of the Eocene, locked up hermetically in its gem-like tomb,--an embalmed corpse in a crystal coffin,--along with fragments of flower-bearing herbs and trees. The first of the Bombycidæ too,--insects that maybe seen suspended over flowers by the scarce visible vibrations of their wings, sucking the honied juices by means of their long, slender trunks,--also appear in the amber, associated with moths, butterflies, and a few caterpillars. Bees and butterflies are present in increased proportions in the latter Tertiary deposits: but not until that terminal creation to which we ourselves belong was ushered on the scene did they receive their fullest development. There is exquisite poetry in Wordsworth's reference to "the soft murmur of the vagrant bee,"-- "A slender sound, yet hoary Time Doth to the soul exalt it with the chime Of all his years; a company Of ages coming, ages gone, Nations from before them sweeping."