Tttt: CANADIAN Entomologist. 125 



Alar expanse, 19 mm. 



Habitat : Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, June. U. S. Nat. Mus. Type 

 No. 9798. 



This is by far ihe largest and most conspicuous species of the genus 

 known to me, totally unlike the other American species described at 

 present, nearest to E. Illigerella, Hiibner, of Europe, but larger and more 

 striking than that sj)ecie'3. It has a notable colour resemblance to Graci- 

 laria Murtfehitella, Busck. 



THE TYPE OF THE GENUS COCCUS. 



BY MRS. M. E. FERNALD, AMHERST, MASS. 



In the Canadian Entomologist, Vol. xxxiv, page 232 (1902), I 

 gave the reasons for adopting hesperidicni as the type of Coccus, which 

 adoption caused such radical changes in the classification of the CoccidcE 

 that I am free 10 say I hesitated to make them in my Catalogue of the 

 CoccidEe of the World, published in 1903. The main difficulty was to give 

 a proper interpretation to the action of Geoffroy, in his Histoire Abre'gee 

 des Insectes, Vol. I (1762), where he removed a part of the Linnsean 

 species from Coccus, and placed them in the genus Chermes, thus using 

 this genus in a different sense from that of Linnaeus, the original founder, 

 and placing adoniduin, phalaridis and his new species ulini under Coccus. 

 Of these three species only phalaridis was given by Linn^us under 

 the genus Coccus, in his Systema Naturae, ed. x (1758), and no one has 

 ever been able to positively identify this insect. Linnseus himself was not 

 able to determine whether it was a Coccus, an Aphis or a Chervies. 

 Under these circumstances, it did not seem wise to make use of the restric. 

 tion of Geoffroy, but I adopted the type established in the next oldest 

 work known to me at that time, which was hesperidum, fixed as the type 

 of Coccus by Latreille in his Hist. Nat. Crust. Ins., Vol. iii, page 267 

 (1802). 



Mr. G. W. Kirkaldy, who has given us some exceedingly valuable 

 Biographical and Nomenclatural Notes on the Hemiptera in *' The 

 Entomologist," Vol, xxxvii, p. 254(1904), objects to the use o^i hesper- 

 idum as the type of Coccus^ and states that he cannot find that the type of 

 Coccus has ever been fixed, or that any species but the true Linna^an cacti 

 is available. 



I have now before me a copy of Sulzei's Die Kennzeichen der 

 Insekten, published in 1761. In this work Sulzer gives, for those times, a 



April, 1906. 



