1914-] E. Brunetti : Review of Genera in Cidicidae. 27 



As regards terminology in venation the culicid workers are in 

 many ways completely wrong and it is remarkable how most of 

 the mistakes are adhered to. 



I have dealt elsewhere (Rec. Ind. Mus. iv, 408) with the usual 

 mistakes of modern writers, so need not recapitulate, except to 

 emphasise yet once again that the so-called *' supernumary cross 

 vein ' ' is not a cross vein at all, but the basal portion of the ^rd 

 longitudinal vein , which always issues from the 2nd longitudinal 

 vein, in spite of Theobald's deplorable statement (Monog. i, 19) that 

 " In a large number of Cidicidae the 3rd long vein passes some 

 way into the basal cell and certainly does not arise from the 2nd 

 longitudinal vein!" This view he again expresses in defining 

 Desvoidia (Monog. i, 322) (as Armigeres), " the wings have the 3rd 

 long vein continued on, into and through the basal cell as a dis- 

 tinct unsealed line." 



The fact is, the 3rd longitudinal vein is frequently sharply 

 angled at the end of its basal section, and, as very frequently 

 occurs in man}^ genera outside of the Cidicidae, it often throws off 

 an appendix at the point of angulation, which adds to the appear- 

 ance of the vein itself being straight or nearh'- so, whilst the short 

 basal section of it, being so often at right angles to the remainder 

 heightens the effect of such basal section being a cross vein. 



Such an appendix is frequently found in other parts of the 

 wing in different families but gives rise to no misinterpretation. 

 It is quite common adventitiously as well as specifically and more 

 or less generically in some Bomhylidae, Asilidae, Therevidae and 

 Tabanidac^ whilst in many Syrphidae it is more often the rule than 

 the exception at the bend of both the 4th and 5th longitudinal 

 veins (see Verrall, " British Flies," Syrphidae, 133) and it occurs 

 at the same spots in numberless Tachinids. Apart from Tipididae 

 and Cidicidae such an appendix is uncommon in the Nemocera. 



In Toxorhynchites this appendix is considerably lengthened 

 and the anterior cross vein joins this appendix to the 4th vein, 

 which is quite an abnormal character 



In many cases the 3rd vein emerges in a curve, or at an acute 

 angle from the 2nd longitudinal, and without an}^ appendix, thus 

 proving its regular place of origin, and a large number of Theo- 

 bald's wing figures confirm this. 



Blanchard gives an excellent diagrammatic wing of Culex 

 (after Van der Wulp, be it noted), distinctly shewing the natural 

 origin of the 3rd vein and the very obvious anterior and posterior 

 cross veins, but his own figures of Anopheles and Culex are very 

 slovenly drawn, and exhibit all the common errors of mosquito 

 students. He adheres to these in the text and even introduces 

 still more cross veins that have no existence in Culicidae. Giles 

 also speaks of a subcostal and a marginal cross vein and proffers 

 the extraordinary intelligence that the anterior cross vein is absent 

 in Culicidael It would be superfluous to enumerate here the errors 

 of all the recent writers on this group, since they have in the main 

 copied one another, with an individual addition or two, but I 



