3O WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER. 



group Corrodentia has undergone a complete taxonomic disinte- 

 gration, and it would probably be best to abandon the term alto- 

 gether and not limit it with Handlirsch to the Psocidse. 



Shipley ('04), in a paper devoted to the emendation of the 

 names of the insect orders, follows Sharp, who seems to agree 

 with Handlirsch in recognizing four independent orders : Isoptera 

 (Termitidae), Embioptera (Embiidae), Psocoptera (Psocidse) and 

 Lipoptera (Mallophaga). Three of these four ordinal names have 

 been coined by Shipley for the sake of making all the insect 

 orders end in ptcra, after the well-known classical models. Both 

 Handlirsch and Borner ('04) repudiate this attempt of Shipley, the 

 former on the grounds of priority, the latter because some of 

 these names, like Psocoptera and Embioptera are by no means 

 homogeneous in their formation with the classic examples Lepi- 

 doptera, Coleoptera, Neuroptera, etc. It seems to me that if the 

 law of priority in nomenclature is to mean anything, it must be 

 applied to the names of the larger groups as rigorously as to the 

 names of genera and species. 



Concerning the termites, with which I am more concerned in 

 this paper, Handlirsch ('04, p. 738) makes the following state- 

 ment : " . . . they have been regarded as having a very primi- 

 tive organization, and the circumstance that many paleozoic and 

 mesozoic forms have been (erroneously) claimed to be termites, 

 seemed to support this view. Among other characters the 

 homonomy of the wings has been interpreted as primitive. A 

 study of these organs, however, shows that they are highly 

 specialized and that the homonomy has come about through 

 atrophy of the anal border of the fore and hind wing. The ter- 

 mite wing is a Blattid wing with strongly reduced anal area, so 

 that the homonomy is a secondary condition. Quite as highly 

 modified are the termites in respect to their polymorphism, the 

 formation of societies, the reduction of the cerci, the multiplica- 

 tion and lengthening of the ovarioles, the reduction in the num- 

 ber of the Malpighian vessels, etc. The feebler concentration 

 of the thoracic segments seems to have accompanied the spe- 

 cialization ,of the wings or rather the decrease in their function, 

 and is, at all events, to be regarded as no more primitive than 

 the similar condition in the fleas. It is quite as impossible to 



