On a Collection of Insect-Remains from the South Wales Coalfield

Abstract

I. I ntroduction . I am indebted to the courtesy of the Director of H.M. Geological Survey, for the opportunity of examining and describing an interesting suite of blattoid remains obtained by the officers of that Survey from the South Wales Coalfield. Insect-remains of Carboniferous age are so rare in this country that the finding of no less than nine specimens, three of them with their counterparts, constitutes an event of considerable palæontological interest. The South Wales Coalfield has thus yielded more examples and more species than all other British coalfields together. All the specimens, with one exception, are blattoid in character. The total number of fossil cockroaches known from the Carboniferous is now great, and nearly all the numerous genera and species are founded upon the anterior wings or tegmina alone. Only once in this country, so far as I am aware, have larval stages been recognized. The number of specimens and of species recorded from the British Coal Measures is singularly small, the great bulk of known forms occurring in Continental and North American coalfields. Dr. Henry Woodward, in quoting S. H. Scudder's census of blattoid forms, mentions 14 genera and 69 species as recorded from all Carboniferous sources. He also mentions that Miall & Denny quote Scudder as recording the number of Palæoblattariæ at 70 species. Scudder was followed by Dr. E. H. Sellards, who took a broad survey of the whole subject, describing the structure of Palæozoic cockroaches with remarkable detail, and adding eight new species and one