There are also remains of _Orthoptera_, _Homoptera_, _Libellulidæ_, and some _Diptera_. Many of the _Neuroptera_ were evidently of gigantic proportions, but most of the insects were of small size, and like the associated plants, are indicative of a temperate climate. They are most nearly allied to forms which now inhabit North America. There are few extinct or unknown genera among them.
RHÆTIC SERIES.--The highest beds referred to this series consist of certain hard, fine grained limestones, which, from their ordinary white colour, have been termed _White Lias_. They occupy a considerable area south and south-east of Warwick. They constitute a purely local deposit, and are confined for the most part to this county and Somersetshire. They are often close-grained and hard limestones, and make a useful building material and a good lime. Their colour is mostly white, with a yellow tinge, and occasionally pink and grey. Some geologists consider these beds to belong to the “Rhætic Series,” others to the passage beds between the Lias and the latter, while others still class them with the Lias.
The undisputed Rhætic rocks lie between the White Lias and the Triassic Marls. In Warwickshire they are rarely exposed, and then much reduced in bulk, compared with their development in Gloucester and Glamorgan. They may be seen to a limited extent below the White Lias in the railway cutting at Harbury, where a band of yellowish sandstone contains the small bivalved crustacean, _Estheria minuta_; and also at the small outlier of Brown’s Wood, and at Stooper’s Wood, near Wooton Wawen, where this sandstone occurs with inferior shelly limestones and sandy bands, containing the usual Rhætic fossils, _e.g._, _Cardium Rhæticum_, _Avicula contorta_, _Pleurophorus elongatus_, _Pecten valoniensis_, and _Schizodus cloacinus_. The nearest exposure of the Rhætic to Birmingham occurs round the fringe of an outlier of Lower Lias resting on the Upper Red Marl near the village of Knowle. This outlier is about a mile and a half long, by half a mile broad. Its highest beds at Copt Heath contain _Ammonites planorbis_. The beds referred to the Rhætic include a stratum of yellow micaceous sandstone full of _Schizodus cloacinus_, which, though usually in the form of casts, is sharp and well defined. The bone bed, though no where exposed, is probably present in its normal position. A fine section, with numerous characteristic Rhætic fossils was exposed on the railway cutting at Summer Hill, between Stratford and Alcester. Rhætic black shales were passed through at Snitterfield, in making a tunnel in connection with the new reservoir for Stratford.