240 [September 



Cephalization is universally applicable, all the above-mentioned fiiTnilies 

 and genera of Insects ought to be placed in a group by themselves. 



Instead of doing this, however. Prof. Dana has based his new Clas- 

 sification primarily, not upon the functions of the front legs, of which 

 he takes no notice whatever, but upon the functions of the wings, 

 according to the greater or less degree in which the front wings are 

 thickened, so as to perform the function, not of wings, but of elytra 

 or wing-cases. It is difficult to see how, even in Ooleoptera where the 

 front wings are completely useless for flying and merely serve to pro- 

 tect the hind wings in repose, those organs are any more " cephalized" 

 or converted into head-organs than in his Pteroprosthenics. At all 

 events, if Ooleoptera are inferior to Diptera, because their flying organs 

 are placed further back from the head, Diptera must be superior to 

 Hymenoptera, because the Dipterous wing is placed one half-segment 

 nearer to the head than the central point common to the front and 

 hind wing in Hymenoptera ; whereas, according to this new system, 

 Hymenoptera are superior to Diptera. 



The minor divisions of this system are based either upon loose, in- 

 definite, unexplained resemblances, such as that of the wings of the 

 Apipens to the wings of a bee, the Aphanipterous Apipens having only 

 the merest rudiments of wings, or upon vague statements of the com- 

 parative largeness of the wings or the comparative slimness of the body 

 and its appendages, (Amplipens and Attenuates,) which although gen- 

 erally are by no means universally true — witness the narrow, lanceolate, 

 almost thread-like wings of many Microlepidopterous Amplipens, and 

 the short, robust bodies of the Psocidian Attenuates — or finally upon 

 fanciful analogies, which are occasionally founded upon the erroneous 

 statements of preceding authors, as will be hereafter shown in the case 

 of Perlina. In none of these minor divisions is there any attempt 

 whatever made to trace any connection with the head, and therefore, 

 so far as they are concerned, the name of Cephalization is certainly a 

 misnomer. 



But allowing that the more or less partial conversion of the front 

 wings into elytra amounts to a decephalization, and allowing still fur- 

 ther that the character of cephalization is of high systematic value in 

 Insecta, surely instead of classing Hemiptera (heteroptera) as inferior 

 to Ooleoptera, and Orthoptera as inferior to Hemiptera, we ought to 



