534 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



HEMIPTERA 



Egbert L. Usinger 

 University of California, Berkeley 



The status of our knowledge of the Hemiptera in 1853 can be summarized 

 by citing the best general work of that period, Amyot and Serville, Histoire na- 

 turelle des insectes, Hemiptcrcs (1843). This classical work was built upon the 

 solid foundations of Linnaeus (1758, 1763), Fabricius, especially the Sy sterna 

 Rhyngotorum (1803), Latrielle (1796-1810), Duf our (1833), Burmeister (1835), 

 and Westwood (1840). In the United States, Thomas Say (1831-1832) should 

 also be mentioned with this group of pioneers. In 1853 no general catalogue ex- 

 isted, but at the end of the decade Anton Dohrn (1859) published his Catalogus 

 Hemipterorum. This was the first world catalogue of this great order. 



Since 1853 tremendous progress has been made. Perhaps the greatest single 

 step was the work of the Swedish father of hemipterology, Carl Stal. Stal was 

 the greatest hemipterist of all time and managed to crowd into his brief forty- 

 five years of life the publication of fundamental works in the Orthoptera, Chry- 

 somelidae, and Hemiptera. Stal had a remarkable sense of fundamental charac- 

 ters and his keys to the principal groups of Hemiptera are still the best keys 

 we have in certain groups. His epoch-making Enumeratio Hemipterorum ( 1870- 

 1876) in five parts has been called the hemipterist 's bible. Unfortunately this 

 great work did not include a treatment of the difficult and very large family 

 Miridae. 



Following upon the work of Stal another Scandinavian, 0. M. Renter, de- 

 veloped a classification of the Miridae which filled the great gap in Stal's work. 

 Eeuter devoted himself in the later years of his life to a fundamental phylo- 

 genetic study of the Hemiptera (1910, 1912). China and Meyers (1929) con- 

 tributed further to our knowledge of phylogeny and still later (1933) China 

 gave the latest phylogenetic diagram. 



Greatly augmenting our knowledge of the Hemiptera of foreign places, the 

 great faunal works appeared during the last half of the nineteenth century. 

 Among these may be mentioned the Fauna of British India by Distant and the 

 Biologia Centr alia- Americana and the Fauna Hawaiiensis. These and other 

 great works expanded our knowledge to all parts of the world and gave a breadth 

 to the classification of the Hemiptera that was not present before this time. 



Cataloguers were very helpful in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 

 and especially to be mentioned is the great Catalogue general des Hemipteres, 

 Heteropteres (1893-1896) by Lethierry and Severin. The Lethierry and Seve- 

 rin Catalogue is still the only world catalogue for most groups of Hemiptera. 

 Unfortunately it did not include the Miridae nor the aquatic Hemiptera. Atkin- 

 son gave us the Catalogue of the Capsidae (Miridae) (1889), and this is still 

 our best catalogue for this important family. Only recently, starting in 1927, 

 was an attempt made to prepare a new General Catalogue of the Hemiptera. 

 This enterprise was a cooperative one with contributions from scientists through- 

 out the world. A number of fascicles appeared over a period of twenty years. 

 The enterprise was abandoned recently by Smith College, but has been revived 

 by Z. P. Metcalf at North Carolina State College. 



