232 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



ON THE TYPE OF THE GENUS COCCUS, L. 



BY MRS. C. H. FERNALD, AMHERST, MASS. 



The first attempt to separate the species given under Coccus in the 

 icth edition of the Systema Naturae of Linneus, was made by Geoffroy, in 

 his Histoire Abregee des Insectes, Vol. I. (1762), where he placed a part 

 of them under Chcrmes and left adonidum and phalaridis, with his new 

 species ulmi, under Coccus. Of these species only phalaridis was given 

 under the genus Coccus by Linneus in his 10th edition, and is therefore 

 the only species that could be regarded as the type of Coccus so far as 

 Geoffroy is concerned. 



In 1802, Latreille, in Vol. 111., p. 267, of his Hist. Nat. Crust. Ins., 

 established hesperidum as the type of the genus Coccus. I have not been 

 able to find that any of the writers between the appearance of the work 

 of Geoffroy and that of Latreille published anything that would fix the 

 type of Coccus. Leach in 18 15 and Samouelle in 18 19 adopted cacti 

 as the type, but the statement made by Leach that it " inhabits fruit 

 trees " makes it quite certain that he had under consideration neither 

 cacti, L., nor the cochineal insect. Samouelle merely copies Leach. 

 Curtis, in his British Entomology (183S), gives cacti, L., as the type, but 

 none of these three authors could affect the question, as the type had 

 already been established by Latreille, if not by Geoffroy, as shown above. 



The phalaridis of Linneus was so obscure an insect that the author 

 himself could not determine whether it was a Coccus, an Aphis or a Chermes. 

 Fonscolombe, in describing his Coccus radicum graminis (Ann. Soc. Ent. 

 Fr. III., 212, 1834), gave the synonymy as follows: Phalaridis (?), 

 Linn., Fab., non C. phalaridis, Enc. Meth. nee Geoffr. Prof. Cockerell 

 has suggested the idea that the phalaridis of Geoffroy was possibly not 

 the same species as the Linnean insect, which is precisely the same idea 

 that Fonscolombe had, as shown by his synonomy. Since it is probably 

 impossible to prove that Geoffroy had any of the Linnean species of the 

 10th edition in his restricted genus, the only safe ground will be to adopt 

 the type established by Latreille in 1802, at least till further light is 

 obtained on the identity of phalaridis, L., which at present is unknown. 



If, therefore, we adopt hesperidum as the type of Coccus, the genera 

 Calymnatus and Calypticus of Costa and Lecanium of Burmeister will fall 



