CLASSIFICATION AND SYNONYMY. 7 



elusions of Stal, Kirkaldy, Reuter and other European authors. 

 They, for the most part, were "closet naturalists," who studied 

 insects in museums or those which had been sent to them by 

 other parties, and which they had never seen in the field. They 

 therefore knew nothing of the local environments which 

 brought about minor changes in structure or color. Bueno 

 ( 1909, 402) has well said: "While we should respect the work 

 of our predecessors, the pioneers in a sterile field, I fail to see 

 the necessity of following in their footsteps, stepping cautious- 

 ly into each footprint like Indians on the warpath." 



I have raised to family or subfamily rank a number of 

 groups formerly regarded as subfamilies or tribes, as the dif- 

 ferences separating them from their allies are greater than 

 those separating similar divisions among the Coleoptera and 

 other orders of insects. Where the names I have used for the 

 higher groups differ materially from those used by present 

 day specialists, their names are given in parenthesis or are 

 referred to in footnotes, and the student can use them if he 

 so desires. 



As with the higher groups so with the genera. I have not 

 always adopted the generic names which have been proposed 

 in recent years for certain of our species. A genus should be 

 based on certain definite and fixed structures and once so 

 founded all species then or thereafter assigned to that genus 

 should possess those structures. Strictly speaking, a genus 

 does not exist in nature but is only an artificial concept pro- 

 posed by man to enable him the more readily to group his 

 species. As to what really constitutes a set of generic char- 

 acters there are about as many individual opinions as there 

 are proposed or adopted genera. My reasons for rejecting or 

 adopting certain questionable genera are usually set forth 

 and the student can use his own judgment as to whether they 

 are sound or not. 



The subgenera and other minor groups of certain authors 

 are not generally recognized in this work. In their place and 

 solely to shorten and simplify the keys I have sometimes used 

 "groups," usually without definite names, as they lead up 

 more easily and with less confusion to the main object sought 

 — the scientific name of the specimen in hand. 



Throughout the work I have used trinomials to designate 

 races, varieties, variants, subspecies, incipient species and 

 sometimes even color varieties, usually noting which of these 



