Mar., 'TO] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 141 



On looking over this catalogue one is impressed by the remarkable 

 industry, and by the accuracy as well, of the author, but it is a cnjes- 

 tion if he does not lean too much toward the purely bibliographical side 

 of his work. This is especially noticeable in his selection of geno-types, 

 where, for instance, he practically make Fabricius redescribe his own 

 genus Acanthia as Salda. We must bear in mind that the earlier ento- 

 mologists fixed no types for their genera. That was a later invention 

 which came with the multiplicity of generic names, and we have no 

 right to so fix the types of these earlier genera as to change their mean- 

 ing. Fabricius founded Acanthia for the Cimex lectularius of Linneus 

 and the name must fall as a synonym of Cimex. When he founded 

 Salda in 1803 he was simply separating out a group of species from his 

 old genus Acanthia which he recognized as generically distinct from 

 lectularius. In the same way I must disagree with our author in his 

 use of the name Cimex- This was the ancient classical name of the 

 bed bug which Linneus certainly considered representative of his genus 

 and Fabricius had no more right to apply this generic name to bidens 

 and its allies than had Latreille to fix sosterae as the type of Acanthia. 

 We have had no more able student of the Hemiptera than Stal, and he 

 in his mature work uses the name Cimex for lectularius. 



There is one course adopted by my friend Kirkaldy against which I 

 wish to record my strongest protest. He says on page xiv that the 

 names of families, tribes, etc., should be formed from the root of the 

 "oldest generic name in the respective group." This is contrary to the 

 rules of zoological nomenclature now almost universally adopted, and 

 is also contrary to the rule of priority for which our talented author 

 is elsewhere so strong an advocate. The family and tribal names should 

 be formed from the "type genus" which I take to mean the genus con- 

 sidered most characteristic by the founder of the family. For in- 

 stance, the family name Capsidae has priority over Miridac and is 

 founded on a more typical genus and there is no valid reason why it 

 should be replaced by the later name. Our author claims that by fol- 

 lowing this plan "we would have a family Lygaeidae which did not con- 

 tain a genus Lygaeus", which is incorrect as Art. 5, of the Code pro- 

 vides that "the name of a family or sub-family is to be changed when 

 the name of its type genus is changed." 



In the matter of the emendation of generic names Mr. Kirkaldy has, 

 T think, taken the right stand, but perhaps he has carried it too far 

 when elsewhere he adopts the form Cyrtoisa for Cyrtosia, when the 

 former was obviously a typographical error. This is taking the re- 

 sponsibility out of the hands of the author and placing it on the type- 

 setter and to be consistent, we should use the name of such typesetter 

 or of the proofreader as authority for the name rather than that of the 

 author. 



