Discoveries in the coal-mines of central France have furnished
by far the greatest advance that has ever been made in our
knowledge of the insects which inhabited the world millions
of years, as geologists believe, before the time when man
made his appearance upon the earth. In that wonderful age
when the carboniferous plants, whose remains constitute the
coal-beds of to-day, were alive and flourishing, the air and
the soil were animated by the presence of flies, grasshoppers,
cockroaches, dragon-flies, spiders, locusts, and scores of
other species which exist but slightly changed at the present
time. But the insects of those remote times attained a gigantic
size, some of the dragon-flies measuring two feet from tip
to tip of their expanded wings. The remains of these insects
have been marvelously preserved in the strata of coal and
rock.--_Harper’s Weekly._
(1633)
=Insecurity=--See HUMAN NATURE, INSECURITY OF.