123 ON THE AFFINITIES OF TWO INTERESTING F088IL INSECTS FROM THE UPPER CARBONIFEROUS OF COMMENTRY, FRANCE. By R J. TiLLYAKD, M.A., D.Sc, F.L.S., F.E.S., Linnkan Macleay Fellow of the Society in Zoology. (With three Text-figures). In May, 1917, Mr. Herbert Bolton, M.Sc, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., Director of the Bristol Museum, England, published an interest-ing paper upon the "Mark Stirrup" Collection of Fossil Insects from the Coal-Measures of Commentry (Allier), Central France."^ As is well known, these insect-beds are of Upper Carboniferous Age, and have yielded a very large number of fossils, most of which have been described by Brongniart and Meunier. The chief characteristics of the assemblage may be shortly summed up in the statement that they appear to have been at a stage when the separate Orders known to us to-day were only beginning to be foreshadowed, nearly all the specimens found being of large size, with dense wing venation, and primitive structure of head, thorax, and abdomen. The dominant group was the Blattoidea. No undoubted Holometabolous Insects are known to exist from these beds, nor were any such known from any Palaeozoic rocks, until the discovery of Permochoi'ista, a genus of undoubted Mecoptera, in the Permian Coal-Measures of Newcastle, N.S.W.f Eight species are represented in the "Mark Stirrup" Collec-tion. Five of these are Blattoids, and one is a Palseodictyopteron. The other two are of very great interest, and their affinities are certainly problematical enough to require very careful investiga-tion before they can be settled with anything approaching finality, * Mem. Proc. Manchester Lit. Phil. Soc, 1916-17, Vol.61, Pt.l, No.2, pp.1 -.32, Pis. i.-v., [May, 1917]. t These Proceedings, 1917.
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