xxxii, '21] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 157 



MONOGRAFIA DELLE CoCCINIGLIE iTAI.IAXK. GUSTAVO LEONARD!. Opera 



Postum'a. Edizione curata e accresciuta di un'appendice dal Prof. F. 

 SILVESTRI. Portici, 1920, VI + 555 pp., 375 text figs. In this posthu- 

 mous volume, edited by Professor Silvestri, there have been brought 

 together the results of Professor Leonardos more than twenty years of 

 work on the Coccidae of Italy. The result is a volume that no serious 

 student of the Coccidae can afford to overlook. There is but little 

 place among the students of this group for anyone with the provincial 

 viewpoint that is content to stop at national or even continental boun- 

 daries. The wide dispersal of many species of Coccidae through the 

 agencies of commerce, and even more, the remarkable peculiarities in 

 their natural distribution, render necessary the adoption of a cosmo- 

 politan attitude. Toward the acquiring of this cosmopolitanism this 

 monograph will be of very considerable aid. While most of the included 

 material has been published before it has appeared in the form of scat- 

 tered papers and is here for the first time brought together. 



I may not here undertake any detailed review of the book, for there 

 is too much of its contents with which I have no acquaintance. But 

 there are some points to which attention may be called. 



While the figures are numerous and clear, they are not especially 

 satisfying, particularly in the subfamily Diaspinae. Leonardi seems 

 too often to have been content with figuring, in the case of the adult 

 females, merely the margin of the pygidium, thus neglecting the dorsal 

 ducts which, in many species, are the most useful of all characters. 

 This is the more unfortunate as the complete and precise figuring of 

 certain of the European species that are the types of genera is especially 

 to be desired. Furthermore, there is in this book, as well as in Leonardi's 

 earlier work, a marked disregard of the commonly accepted rules of 

 nomenclature. The subfamily name, Hcniicoccinac. is employed, al- 

 though there is no genus Hcnucoccus. the onlv included genus be ins? 

 Kermcs. or. as it is here called, Kermncnccus. The excuse for the sub- 

 stitution of Krnnococcus for Kcnucs is the similaritv in nronunciation 

 between the latter and Chrrntrs. Unfortunate though this similarity 

 may be, the change is not justified under the International Code. An- 

 other instance of the same tvpe is the emoloyment of the subfamily 

 name Lecaniinnc. although this subfamily includes the genus Coccus. 

 which is the type of the family. 



With certain of T.eonardi's conceptions of genera and even of the 

 larger groups I cannot agree, but these point? have in part been dis' ' 

 cussed elsewhere and may be passed over. 



The book lists 147 species, which are distributed amone 50 genera. 

 For a country as large as Ttalv and as favorably situated climatically, 

 this seems a rather small number. Indeed, from this side of the At- 

 lantic, it appears that the knowledge of tli- Coccidae of Europe in gen- 

 eral is strangely limited. Until such time as there appear^ ;i ; 

 dealing with the Coccidae of the entire continent, this volimie will 

 tain a very large proportion of the available in formation. G. I-'. 

 Stanford University, Calif. 



