INTRODUCTION. 
Tus volume is devoted to two families of the Phytophagous Coleoptera, the Hispide 
and Cassidide. The Hispide, with the exception of a short appendix, have been 
wholly dealt with by the late J. 8. Baly, the Cassidide by myself. Baly has already 
contributed some general remarks upon the Hispide, so that, as regards this family, it is 
necessary to add only some particulars as to the number of genera and species represented 
within our limits. Altogether, for the two families, 453 species are enumerated, the 
numbers being almost evenly apportioned—Hispide 226, Cassidide 227. In the 
Hispide 169 new species and two new genera, and in the Cassidide 55 new species 
and two new genera, have been described. The total number of species of Hispide 
for the whole world is given as 496 in the Munich Catalogue (1874), and for the 
Cassidide 1795. This disproportion in the numbers of the two families, as compared 
with those for Central America, is, however, partly due to the fact that the Cassidide 
have been exhaustively monographed by Boheman (1850-62), while no monograph 
of the Hispide has yet appeared. Nevertheless, Central America contains but a 
limited number of Cassidide, as compared with Tropical South America: for example, 
Mesomphalia with 227 species (1874) has nineteen only within our limits; and many 
other South-American genera are represented by a very small number of species, as 
Desmonota, Tauroma, Dolichotoma, Calaspidea, and Omoplata, or are altogether absent, 
as Calliaspis, Spilophora, Canistra, and Pecilaspis. Mexico and Guatemala, however, 
possess a number of peculiar species of Cassidide, especially in the genera Chelymorpha, 
Physonota, Coptocycla, and Ctenochira, very few of which reach our northern frontier. 
Panama or Costa Rica appears to be the northern limit of such genera as Delocrania, 
Desmonota, Calaspidea, and Omaspides. America north of Mexico (Henshaw’s 
Catalogue, 1885) has thirty-five species of Hispide and twenty species of Cassidide 
(three of which are doubtful)—North America, for some, at present, inexplicable 
- reason, possessing exceedingly few Cassidide. Cassida, the only European genus of the 
family, and with upwards of 200 species in the Old World, is represented by very 
few species in North or Central America, it there being replaced by Coptocycla. 
