CLASSIFICATION' ANH SYNONYMY. i 



they had in hand. ^luch confusion in synonymy lias therefore re- 

 sulted l>y "guessing-" at what they had, as each ol' our American 

 authors has usually come to a different conclusion, and described 

 or named his own species accordingly. I'nless some easily dis- 

 tinguished or reliable character was given by tlie European author 

 by which the American insect lias been or is readily distinguished, 

 or until a direct comparison with the type, if the latter is avail- 

 aide, has been made by some competent Orthopterologist and the 

 American conspecies thereby reliably determined, it is often bet- 

 ter, in my opinion, to disregard Hiese old European names and to 

 adopt later ones of undoubted status. 



While the law of priority has been usually followed in 1 1n- 

 naming of the species in this work, there ai-i- some instances 

 where the rulings leading up to it were Technical, or. in my opin- 

 ion, nonsensical, and I have therefore retained a better known 

 name in preference to the one which, in accordance with strict 

 priority, has been recently assigned by other authors. In such 

 cases T have mentioned in the text or footnote my reasons for not 

 adopting the proposed change in names. 



Throughout the work I have used trinominnls to designate 

 races, varieties, variants, subspecies, incipient species and some- 

 times even color varieties, usually no] ing which of these minor 

 forms I consider the third name to represent. The ;!ame of the 

 typical variety, if more than one exists, is not printed as a tri- 

 nom.inal. I thus use \ontof c/t i.r crixlaliix iSciidderi. not \oino- 

 idtl.r crlxhihix rrixhititx { Scudder ) . In many cases I have not 

 recognixed the so-called geographical races of recent authors. 

 Where a well known species ranges over a large area, the differ- 

 ent environments clue to altitude, variation in mean annual tem- 

 perature, atmospheric conditions, difference in topography, 

 drainage and soils, varied food plants and many other causes, are 

 sure to bring about certain changes in its external structure. 

 If only the extremes of these variants be at hand they are often 

 so different in appearance as to cause ihem to be considered 

 races or even different species. However, where a large series 

 from all parts of the range are present, intermediates are almost 

 sure to be found and there is little use and often much resulting 

 confusion in giving or recognizing a name for each slightly vari- 

 able form. 



Where, in the original description, the specific name was 

 placed by the author in a genus different from that to which it is 

 now referred, the name of the author or its abbreviation is placed 

 in parenthesis. 



