Did Flowers Exist During the Carboniferous Epoch?

Abstract

I CANNOT accept Mr. McLachlan's reference of the interesting Breyeria borinensis to the Ephemeridæ, even though he has “examined the fossil”, and “has no doubt” about it. The photograph which I possess is so beautifully sharp that it brings out the minutest details, and a careful examination and comparison of it with specimens and drawings leads me to the conclusion, that in the general character of the wing-neuration it is strictly lepidopterous and of the Bombycine type, having the costal, subcostal, and median nervures, with their branches and bifurcations, arranged precisely as in that group, but differing in the much greater length of the wing and the increased number of the branches of the subcostal vein—seven instead of four. In some of the Chalcosiidæ, however, there are often six branches to this vein, but crowded together and sometimes anastomosing, owing to the much shorter apical portion of the wing. In this family also we often have an intermediate false vein, which is distinctly visible in the fossil. Until, therefore, I am referred to some group of insects with which it more nearly agrees, I must believe it to be an ancestral moth, even though, according to Prof. Haeckel and Mr. Scudder, moths ought not to have existed in the carboniferous epoch.