Did Flowers Exist during the Carboniferous Epoch?

THE systematic position of the genus Breyeria, founded for the reception of a fossil insect, having formed the subject of a recen discussion in NATURE (vol. xix. pp. 554, 582), I have just visited Brussels to examine the original type. Through the courtesy of M. de Borre I have been allowed to submit it to a careful microscopical scrutiny, and have sketched, with the aid of a camera lucida, a considerable part of it on a large scale The facies of the neuration is extremely similar to that of genera allied to Palingenia of the Ephemeridæ, resembling theirs not only in the relative abundance of cross-veinlets, but also in the manner of the aberrations of abnormal cross-veinlets. The Palingenia group is sufficiently elastic to comprise Breyeria although this differs in detail to some extent from any known genus of recent Ephemeridæ.