218 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



has avoided the strict application of the rule — my researches 

 convince me that his main conclusions are perfectly correct. It 

 would have been unnecessary to make such a remark, were it not 

 that three important works by serious rhynchotists* have been 

 published (subsequent to the 'Eevisio'), in whichReuter's results 

 have been almost entirely ignored. 



In consulting these works, moreover, I have been unable to 

 appreciate the method by which the names of the families and 

 subfamilies are appropriated ; for instance, on p. 45 of Puton's 

 'Catalogue,' the first tribe of the "Reduvides" is given as 

 "Ernesini." Why? Is Emesa a more typical genus than 

 Ploiariola or Ploiaria ? It seems to me that the only satis- 

 factory and uniform method — in the present state of our know- 

 ledge—is to take the genus founded earliest, and form from that 

 the family, &c, names; i.e., Ploiaria, dating from 1786, is the 

 oldest — in its subfamily — and that subfamily should then be 

 known as Ploiariiiwe (or tribe Ploiariini). Reduvius, 1775, is 

 the oldest genus in the whole family, so that the latter is, as 

 usually termed, Reduviimi. On the other hand, Miris, 1794,1 

 antedates Capsus, 1803, by nine years, and the family should be 

 known as Mirid^e. 



1. Linnaeus founded in the ' Systema Naturae,' ed. 10, 1758, 

 three heteropterous genera ; viz. Cimex, Nepa, and Notonecta. 

 As the types of the two last (i. e. N. cinerea and N. glauca) are 

 not disputed, it is unnecessary to dwell upon them. Eighty- 

 three species are included in Cimex, but it was not broken up till 

 Fabricius in 1775, ' Systema Entom.,' removed several species to 

 found Acanthia and Reduvius. 



The type of Cimex must be among the Linnean species left 

 therein by Fabricius, and cannot therefore be C. lechdarius, 

 removed by the latter to Acanthia. I 



Reuter has indicated personatus, Linn., as the type of 

 Reduvius, Fabr. (Lamarck, 1801), and this seems to be generally 

 accepted. He also indicates zosterce, Fabr., and littoralis, Linn., 

 as the types of Acanthia, Fabr., but as this has been accepted 

 neither by Saunders, Leithierry and Severin, nor Puton, nor yet 

 by Horvath,§ it may be worth while to recapitulate the reasons 



* Edward Saunders, 1892, ' Hemipt. Heteropt. British Islands ' ; Lethi- 

 erry & Severin, 1893-96, ' Catal. general Hemipteres,' i.-iii. ; A. Puton, 1899, 

 ' Catal. Hemipteres palearct.,' ed. 4. 



f " 177V by printer's error in the ' Revisio,' pp. 613 and 764. 



| This result is unaffected by any subsequent type-fixations or new 

 genera; for example, C. lectularius was wrongly fixed by Latreille in 1802 

 as the type of Cimex. Dr. Reuter remarks (p. 268) : " Dass Latreille .... 

 fur diese Art den Namen Cimex aufnahm, scheint mir nur ein Zeugniss 

 seines guten Tactes zu sein." The learned Doctor is doubtless endowed 

 with a very subtle gift of irony, as I fail to see any display of " tact " in 

 committing an error which has caused nearly a century of nomenclatural 

 confusion, and left the commonest bug without a proper name. 



§ 1898, ' A magyar birod allatv. Hemipt.' (1897), p. 43. 



