172 Journal Sew York Entomological Society, [vol. xiv 



is, in our experience, never an important character, in any insects, 

 being adaptive and not of more, often of less than generic value. 

 When a character exists in one sex only, it is of far less importance, 

 belonging to the class of secondary sexual characters, which bv some 

 systematists of standing are uniformly denied to be of even generic 

 value. In this case, both these objections, applying together, have 

 added force and appear to us to utterly discredit any system founded 

 on them. 



In the definition of genera, much importance is attached to the 

 shape and arrangement of the scales. To any one conversant 

 with the value of different characters in insects, this appears, a 

 priori, an unfortunate selection. How it works cannot be better 

 shown than by a quotation from James and Liston*, whose common 

 s?nse remarks deserve the greatest publicity: 



"In the classification of mosquitoes Mr. Theobald relies almost 

 entirely upon scale structure for the distinctions between different 

 genera, and in one case he has used this character alone for the forma- 

 tion of a subfamily. 



"The classification is based in great part on the shape, and not upon 

 the presence or absence of scales, and it is a matter of great difficulty 

 to decide in some cases what form of scale predominates; nor does 

 Mr. Theobald give any indication of what portion of a wing, for ex- 

 ample, should be examined to decide this point. 



"The terms 'lanceolate', 'long and narrow', 'true scales', etc. 

 are not sufficiently definite to permit of such scales being easilv dis- 

 tinguished from one another, except perhaps by Mr. Theobald him- 

 self. It is obvious that the distinction between 'hair-like curved 

 scales' and ' narrow curved scales' is not great, and also that it 

 would be difficult to decide whether the abdomen is 'hairv' or 

 whether it is covered with 'hair-like scales' which apparently resem- 

 ble hairs so closely that they cannot be termed 'true scales.' As 

 regards the wing again it would be certainly difficult to decide whether 

 most of the scales were 'lanceolate' or whether thev were 'mostly 

 long and narrow' especially as the part of the wing to be examined 

 is not stated, but on this decision alone depends the distinction be- 

 tween the genera Anopheles and Myzomyia. 



*A monograph of the Anopheles mosquitoes of India, Calcutta, 1904; pp. 16 

 and 64. 



