﻿HOPLOTHRIPS CORTICiS : A PROBLEM IN NOMENCLATURE. 103 



genus. To Haplothrips, as has been noticed, Amyot and Serville 

 assigned only one species, Haplothrips alhipmnis, Burmeister, 

 1838 ; and this is consequently the type of the genus (type by 

 monotypy). According to Uzel this insect is identical with 

 Thrips aculcata, Fabricius, 1803. The type of Hoplothrips was 

 designated by Karny in 1912 as Hoplothrips corticis. 



In all this the modern students of Thysanoptera are agreed. 

 But in the application of the name Hoplothrips, the writer, for 

 nomenclatorial reasons, has been forced to disagree with the 

 conclusions expressed in previous papers on this subject. 



In his * Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire des Insectes,' 

 tome iii. Stockholm, 1773, De Geer describes a Trips corticis, 

 which he says is the same as the " Thrips elytris albidis, corpore 

 nigro, ahdomiuali seta'' of Geoffroy. The name corticis is printed 

 in Roman type (the rest of the sentence is in italics), and is 

 included in parenthesis. According to the Entomological Code 

 (Banks and Caudell, 1912), this makes the name truly binomial, 

 for " when an author writes the first Latin word after a generic 

 name in a different type from that of the other Latin words, or 

 puts it in parentheses, such word is the specific name, and the 

 author is considered as having fulfilled the requirements of 

 binomial nomenclature." Three of Linn6's species of Thysano- 

 ptera, namely, IVips physapus, T. juniperina. and T. fasciata, 

 are diagnosed in the same way by De Geer in this memoir. His 

 contemporaries and successors accepted and employed all names 

 so proposed, almost invariably without question. The Hymeno- 

 ptera which he describes in the same volume and in the same 

 way are credited to him by Dalla Torre in his monumental 

 ' Catalogus Hymenopterorum ' ; the names of Orthoptera are 

 accepted by Kirby in his ' Synonymic Catalogue of Orthoptera ' ; 

 and those of Coleoptera by Gemminger and Harold in their 

 ' Catalogus Coleopterorum.' If De Geer's Trips corticis is to be 

 rejected, we must also drop such familiar names as Necrobia 

 rufipes, Hylobius piceiis, and Harpalus pennsylvaiiicus among the 

 beetles; Ischnoptera pennsylvanica, Melanoplusfemur-rubrum, and 

 Nemobius fasciatus of Orthoptera ; and Anasa tristis, the current 

 name of the destructive American squash bug. It is evident 

 that entomologists are agreed that De Geer understood at this 

 time the principles of binomial nomenclature, and adhered 

 properly to them. The name Trips corticis, De Geer, is thus 

 valid for the purposes of zoological nomenclature. 



Now, having apparently settled the question of the accepta- 

 bility of this name, it remains to decide to what European 

 species it should be applied. This is a simple matter, for his 

 description is of a Phloeothripid which he found abundantly in 

 June, presumably in the vicinity of Stockholm, under the bark 

 of some old alders, and which, after passing the pupal stage, 

 had become "noire ou d'un brun tres-obscur. Les cuisses sont 



