Fig. 132.
Fig. 132.
These (Fig, 132) are not fossil honey-comb as many are led to believe, though the resemblance is so striking that no wonder that the public generally are deceived. These specimens are fossil coral, which the paleontologist places in the genus Favosites; favosus being a common species in our State. They are very abundant in the lime rock in northern Michigan, and are very properly denominated honey-stone coral. The animals of which these were once the skeletons, so to speak, are not insects at all, though often called so by men of considerable information. It would be no greater blunder to call an oyster or a clam an insect.
The species of the genus Favosites first appeared in the Upper Silurian rocks, culminated in the Devonian, and disappeared in the early Carboniferous. No insects appeared till the Devonian age, and no Hymenoptera—bees, wasps, etc.—till after the Carboniferous. So the old-time Favosites rearedits limestone columns and helped to build islands and continents untold ages—millions upon millions of years—before any flower bloomed, or any bee sipped the precious nectar. In some specimens of this honey-stone coral (Fig, 133), there are to be seen banks of cells, much resembling the paper cells of some of our wasps. This might be called wasp-stone coral, except that both styles were wrought by the self-same animals.
Fig. 133.
Fig. 133.