561 



MONOGRAPH OF THE AUSTRALIAN CICADID.E. 



Bv F. ^\. GoDiNG, Ph.D., M.D., and W. W. Froggatt, F.L.S., 

 Government Entomologist. 



(Plates xviii.-xix.) 



Introduction. 



Though several of our large cicadas were among the first insects 

 collected and forwarded to England in the early part of the last 

 century, yet, so far as Australian entomologists are concerned, 

 this family has been one of the least noticed, not a single species 

 having been locally described, and very few even identified in our 

 Museum collections. Yet they are one of the most typical groups 

 of our insect fauna, and no sound is more likely to attract the 

 attention of a traveller landing in Sydney in the summer than 

 the incessant trill of the common green cicada. The original 

 descriptions of our species are scattered through the Proceedings 

 and Transactions of English and Foreign Scientific Societies, 

 Voyages, Memoirs and books, some of which are rare and difficult 

 to obtain; so that the authors think that the bringing together 

 of all the known species, and the descriptions of all the new ones 

 obtained during the progress of their work, will be of some 

 value to future workers in the Homoptera. The descriptions 

 have been made as brief as possible, previous ones amplified or 

 amended after a study of the specimens, rendered necessary 

 where a series of a more or less variable species were under con- 

 sideration, when both colour and size were often found to vary 

 considerably. The ample material in hand has also rendered it 

 possible to give the exact locality and range of many species, 

 which up to the present have been simply recorded from Australia 

 or New Holland. 



In following out the range of the different species the authors 

 have been struck with the fact that though many are strictly 

 confined to the coastal parts of Eastern Australia, others are 



