Fossil Spiders.
Although no Spiders have been yet discovered in any rocks so ancient as the Carboniferous series, the presence of Insects in this series, and also of Scorpions, renders it highly probable that the cognate family of Spiders was coordinate with Scorpions, in restraining the Insect tribes of this early epoch, and that it will ere long be recognised among its fossil remains.[1]
The existence of Spiders in the Jurassic portion of the Secondary formations has been established, by Count Munster's discovery of two species in the lithographic limestone of Solenhofen. M. Marcel de Serres and Mr. Murchison have discovered fossil Spiders in Freshwater Tertiary strata near Aix in Provence. (See Pl. 46″, Fig. 12.)
- ↑ The animal found by Mr. W. Anstice in the Ironstone of Coalbrook Dale, and noticed by Mr. Prestwich as "apparently a Spider" (Phil. Mag. May, 1834, v. iv. p. 376,) has been subsequently laid open by me, and shown to be an Insect, belonging to the family of Curculionidæ. (Pl. 46″, Fig. 1.) At the time when it was figured, and supposed to be a Spider, its head and tail were covered by iron stone, and its appearance much resembled an animal of this kind. Mr. Prestwich announces also the discovery, in the same formation, of a Coleopterous Insect, which will be further described in our next section, as referable also to the Curculionidæ.
It is scarcely possible to ascertain the precise nature of the animals, rudely figured as Spiders and Insects on Coal slate by Lhwyd, (Ichnograph. Tab. 4,) and copied by Parkinson, (Org. Rem. V. iii. Pl. 17, Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6;) but his opinion of them is rendered highly probable by the recent discoveries in Coalbrook Dale: "Scripsi olim suspicari me Araneorum quorundam icones, unà cum Lithophytis in Schisto Carbonarià observasse: hoc jam ulteriore experientià edoctus apertè assero. Alias icones habeo, quæ ad Scarabæorum genus quàm proxime accedunt. In posterum ergo non tantam Lithophyta, sed et quædam Insecta in hoc lapide investigate conabimur." Lhwyd Epist. iii. ad fin.
