XXX. Observations on Succinic Insects

Abstract

AT our last meeting * some few observations were read on mummied insects in a tolerable state of preservation after the lapse of two or three thousand years.I now wish to draw your attention to insects of much greater antiquity, insects which for aught I know may vie in antiquity with the " great globe itself."I allude to those which are contained in amber.It requires no very warm imagination to paint in glowing colours the overwhelming productiveness of the earliest ages : enough may be gathered for our present purpose from the imagery of the poet, in describing a period when the sun with greater power than at present shot his rays on the gladdened forest, when every tree and shrub distilled liquid amber from their branches, and when the whole air teemed with the countless myriads of insect population.It may require however the wand of the fairy or magician to account for the sudden and happy inhumation of these insects in their amber tenements ; I say happy, for in most instances they appear not to have struggled to avoid their destiny, but seem fresh and beautiful as if still animate with life.It is not my intention here to propound a theory; this I most willingly leave to others : some speculations have enjoyed an ephemeral reputation, and then fell without any very satisfactory results being obtained from them, and others will probably do the same.I shall therefore proceed at once to make some remarks on the substances which contain insects, give the tests by which they may be known t, and then place before you a Synoptical Table of such genera and species a,s have fallen under my notice.The only recorded bituminous and resinous substances, I believe, which contain insects are the following, namely, amber and copal (Observe, I do not here include the Cmstacea or Arachnids).It is not unlikely however that eventually they may be discovered in coal:, bituminized shale, and in the honey-stone.Amber is occasionally met with in the gravel-pita near London, and I have seen specimens which were found in Hyde Park.At Aldborough on the coast of Suffolk, after a raking tide, it is thrown on the beach in considerable quantities, along with masses * Vide Journal of Proceedings, p. xi.