1900] MARYLAND ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 4OI 



AIDS TO A RECOGNITION OF SOME NORTH AMERICAN 



GENERA AND SPECIES OF THE OLD FAMILY 



FULGORID(E. 



By p. R. UHLER. 



The genus Scolops Germar forms one of the character- 

 istic groups of the smaller Fulgorids which belong to 

 temperate North America. Like other genera of the 

 same family, some if not all of the species have indi- 

 viduals with short, moderately Tong, or fully developed 

 hemelytra. These stages of development of the adult 

 insects carry with them modifications of the hemelytral 

 areas and the veins, and determine to a certain degree the 

 thickness of the integument, which when fully developed 

 becomes thin and membranous posteriorly. The same 

 conditions prevail here as in the genera Phylloseclis, Naso, 

 Bruchomorpha, etc. That is, individuals of the short- 

 winged form are most commonly met with, at least in the 

 Atlantic States, but in spots especially favorable for their 

 development, they derive vigor enough to become com- 

 pleted. Experiments are needed here to determine the 

 meaning of these phases of personality, their origin, their 

 duration, and their broader connections with the cycle of 

 other forms amid which they emanate and where they 

 prosecute their struggle for maintenancy. Most of them 

 live in places where the ground is damp, on grasses and 

 low herbage which from density of growth afford them 

 means of concealment and protection. Their color, when 

 mature, is some shade of straw yellow, usually darkened 

 by weathering and contact with damp stainings on vege- 

 tation and soils. In the dryer air of the uplands, and 

 especially of the Rocky mountains, these insects mature to 

 a grayish tint and become powdered with a whitish bloom. 

 Occasionally solutions of iron rust stain them a dusky 

 fuscous tint. 



May 25. 



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