March, 1916] Homopterous Studies. Part I 163 



Walker's List with Supplement was completed in 1858, and 

 contained the descriptions of numbers of South African Genera 

 and species. Concerning his work. Distant has written: 

 "Walker was a prolific and somewhat hasty writer, and the 

 value of his work was very uneven. His name is however 

 associated with and never can be excluded from the annals 

 of the South African Homoptera, or scarcely from those of 

 any other region : he was a pioneer, though his survey required 

 and still requires much supervision." 



Stal's monumental work, Hemiptera Africana appeared in 

 1866, and is held today as the most comprehensive work ever 

 accomplished on the order, so far as South Africa is concerned. 

 Of him Distant writes: "Stal built on his own foundation, he 

 possessed a genius for taxonomy; what Lacordaire did for 

 Coleoptera, he more than achieved for the Rhynchota and his 

 work may be further elaborated, but will never be super- 

 seded. He was a severe critic of Walker's work and even 

 proposed its suppression." Stal wrote almost exclusively in 

 Latin with a style all his own, and it has been the lot of many 

 Hemipterologists to experience difficulty in translating many 

 of his expressions. He apparently collected in South Africa, 

 although the majority of his work was done on Museum 

 material. 



Associated with the names of Stal and Walker may be 

 mentioned Signoret, the French collector and taxonomist. 

 During the years 1853 to 1856, he published in the Annals 

 of the Entomological Society of France, quite a number of 

 descriptions of South African Homoptera, chiefly of the family 

 Jassidae. Later (1880), his "Essai sur les Jassides" appeared. 



Of the more recent workers and investigators, the names of 

 Distant (Rhynchota), Mehchar (Homoptera), Karsch 1890, 

 (Fulgoridas) , Buckton 1903, (Membracidas), Schouteden 1901, 

 (Cercopidas), and Jacobi 1904, (Cercopidae), stand out prom- 

 inently. Distant is perhaps the highest living authority on the 

 Homoptera of South Africa and has contributed many valuable 

 works on the group. Chief among these may be mentioned his 

 "Synonymic Catalogue of Homoptera," his "Insecta Trans- 

 vaaliensia, " and many papers in the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History. Melichar's work has been restricted 

 somewhat to the German East African province, where he has 

 collected extensively and described numbers of forms. 



