DESCRIPTIONS OF TWO HEMIPTEROUS INSECTS. 537 



Art. III. — Description of two Hemipterous Insects. By Mr. Adam 

 White, M.E.S., M.B.S. 



Of the habits of the Hemiptera, except in one instance, little 

 or nothing is known ; a few scattered notices in Wolff's work 

 and a paper by Hausmann being, as far as I am aware, nearly 

 the sum and substance of what has been registered on the 

 economy of an order of insects, numerous in species, ever 

 varied in form, often most beautifully coloured, and frequently 

 curiously sculptured. In the scutellated division, two species 

 of which I intend to describe in this paper, an Indian species, 

 Plataspis silphoides, (Tetyra silphoides, Fab.) is stated by 

 M. Westermann of Copenhagen, to be found in great profusion 

 in rice fields, upon the crops of which it is believed by the 

 natives to commit great havoc. ■ 



It would be difficult to find out the principles upon which 

 entomologists have acted, in assigning the various terms of 

 Scutellera, Tetyra, and Thyreocoris, — three generic names 

 established in the same year, and evidently intended by their 

 respective authors, Lamarck, 2 Fabricius, 3 and Schrank 4 , to 

 be applied to that one and the same group of insects, indi- 

 cated by Linnaeus in his ' Systema Naturae' as " Cimices scu- 

 tellati ; scutello longitudine abdominis". Had those succeed- 

 ing naturalists, who have adopted all three names in their 

 divisions (rendered necessary by the discovery of many new 

 species), proceeded upon the plan laid down by some scien- 

 tific legislators, of considering the first species described as 

 the type of the genus, the matter would have been set at rest ; 

 Cimex nobilis, L., in that case, would have been universally 

 regarded as the type of Scutellera ; Cimex imperialis, Fabr., 

 the type of Tetyra; and the beautifully marked Cim. lineatus, 

 L., would have settled down as the Thyreocoris lineata of 

 Schrank. 



Dr. Leach, however, applied the first of these names to the 

 set of insects to which Cim, nobilis, signatus, &c. belong ; 

 the second to the species lineatus, maurus, fuliginosus, in- 

 unctus, scarabceoides and their allies ; while he restricted the 

 name Thyreocoris to Schrank's last species the Cimex globus, 



1 Silbermann, ' Revue Entomologique,' I. 3e livr. p. 111. 

 2 Syst. des Animaux sans Vert. p. 293, (Paris, 1801). 

 3 Systema Rhyngotorum, p. 128, (ed. Brunsvigag, 1803. I have never 

 seen the 1st edition of this work, referred to by Cuvier in the alphabetical 

 table of authors, given in the ' Regne Animal,' and by Percheron in his Bib- 

 liographic Entomologique, as being published in 1801). 



4 Fauna Boica, II. abth. 1, p. 67, (Ingolstadt, 1801). 

 Vol. III.— No. 35, n. s. 3 n 



