CHINCH BUG ITS GENERIC NAME. 293 



What has been stated will serve to give the common reader 

 some view of the embarrasments often encountered in this vast 

 science, in arriving at the correct designation for an insect. 

 Especially in this country do we experience such embarras- 

 ments and are obliged in many instances to remain in doubt and 

 uncertainty, from being unable to find in any of our public 

 libraries those authorities a reference to which is indispensible 

 for obtaining the information we desire. 



The pamphlet of Mr. Say in which this insect is described is 

 out of print and very scarce. Dr. Le Baron not having seen it 

 suggested the name Rhyparochromus devastator as being an ap- 

 propriate one for this insect. Although all the thighs are 

 slightly thickened in this species, the anterior ones are not ob- 

 viously more enlarged than the others, and are not sufficiently 

 inflated to place it in the genus to which Dr. Le Baron assigns 

 it, in which there is a striking contrast between the anterior and 

 the four slender posterior thighs. In more than two dozen 

 species of this genus which are now before me, this contrast is 

 very plain and evident in every instance. Mr. Say therefore 

 was clearly correct in referring this insect to the genus Lygseus 

 and not to his genus Pamerus, which, as we have seen above, is 

 synonymous with Rhyparochromus. 



This group of insects has been subdivided into quite a number 

 of genera since Mr. Say's day, and the present species now per- 

 tains to the genus Micropus, a name meaning small footed or 

 short legged, proposed by M. Spinola in his Essay upon the in- 

 sects of this order, published in 1840, page 218. I announced 

 this fact a year since in the Country Gentleman (vol. v, p. 396) 

 in reply to the enquiry of E. C. Smith, asking the correct name 

 of this insect. A communication appeared in the same periodi- 

 cal soon after (vol. vi, p. 106), stating among other things, that 

 the genus Micropus had not been recognized by some of the 

 standard writers upon this order of insects, and that " Herrick 

 Schaffer would have placed^the chinch bug, had it been known 

 to him, in the genus Pachymerus" — the same genus in which, as 

 we have seen above, Mr. Say long ago determined it did not be- 

 long ! I deem it unnecessary further to notice an anonymous 



