270 STUDIES IN AMERICAN TETTIGONIIDAE (oRTHOPTERa) 



French Guiana, labelled fasciatus bj^ Saussure. Scudder's type 

 of meridionalis, now before us, is a female showing the extreme 

 of the braehypterous condition and having a decidedly longer 

 and weakly (though more noticeably) curved ovipositor than 

 normal; this specimen he quite naturally believed to be an unde- 

 scribed species. It remained for Redtenbacher, however, to 

 throw the nomenclature surrounding this, the dominant and most 

 plastic species in tropical America, into hopeless confusion. In 

 1891 that author, in his "Monographic der Conocephaliden," 

 sorted out all macropterous examples of the present species, 

 recording them as X. Jasciatum and probably as A', saltator in 

 company with other macropterous examples of fasciatus, cinereus 

 and probably other species; he then, having divided the braehyp- 

 terous material into two series, erected the synonyms propincpium 

 and hrachypterum, suggesting the affinity of iiemorale (for which 

 he erected the synonym X. curtipenne on the previous page) and 

 gossijpii (Scudder's synonym of C. hrevipennis) to propin- 

 qman, and Scudder's meridionale to hrachypterum — the value of 

 the resultant key may be imagined. Without long study of the 

 series which Redtenbacher had before him it will be impossible 

 to say to what species each individual record belongs, but the 

 data given above will need but little modification. Karny, in his 

 "Revisio Conocephalidarum," has made few changes from Red- 

 tenbacher's work which paper has succeeded only in bringing con- 

 fusion to the study of this and doubtless the other American 

 groups of the subfamily. The species is to be found in the lit- 

 erature frequently quoted as the above synonyms and also as 

 fasciatus J ~ 



This insect, whose position in the genus is between C. equato- 

 rialis and C. borelli in group G of the subgenus Xiphidion, is the 

 most abundant and widely distributed of the tropical American 

 species. As is often the case with such species very great varia- 

 tion is found, and in the present case material from various por- 

 tions or often from the same portion of its range exhibits diversity 

 in width of vertex, form of lateral lobes of the pronotum, length 

 and form of tegmina, production of male c(>rci (which, however, 

 never differentiate from the typical general contour, thus fixing 



"Recorded by Giglio-'I'os, lioU. Mus. Zool. Anat. com]). I'liiv. Torino, ix, 

 no. ISI, ]). 40, (1894), as A'. Jaaciahuit fr,)in Sai\ I'cdro Province, Farafiuay, 

 and as A', hrnchiiplcritm from Asuncion and San I'chIto Province, Paraguay, 

 (macropterous and l)rachyi)1('rous examples prot)ably). 



