THE SIX-SPOTTED LEAFHOPPER. 97 
pect that it occurred primarily on some of the indigenous legumes of 
its original habitat. 
THE SIX-SPOTTED LEAFHOPPER. 
(Cicadula 6-notata Fall.) 
The widely spread six-spotted leafhopper (Cicadula 6-notata Fall.) 
was described in Europe more than a century ago, and the references 
in systematic literaturé by Curtis, Flor, Germar, Kirschbaum, Fieber, 
Marsh, Melichar, and others show it to have been a common and well- 
known, and apparently a widely dispersed species in that country 
during the past century. Little seems to have been done with it from 
an economic standpoint. Leonardi, in the Italian work on Injurious 
Insects in Italy (Gli Insetti Nocivi), makes mention of it as an enemy 
of cereals but with no discussion of habits or modes of treatment. 
Edwards in a systematic work on British Homoptera records it as 
“very abundant on grasses.”’ Doubtless many other such redords 
occur scattered through the European works on insects, but a 
thorough discussion of the species for economic purposes seems never 
to have been given. Considering the present distribution of the 
species over the whole United States, including Alaska, its history in 
this country becomes a matter of great interest. 
The first published record of occurrence of the species in America 
appears to be that of Forbes in 1884, followed by Woodworth (1885) 
and Provancher (1890), and there is a record in the Bureau of Ento- 
mology for Lafayette, Ind., by Prof. F. M. Webster, dated November 
30, 1885. 
Unfortunately we can not safely assume that lack of record by 
earlier entomologists is in this case any positive proof that the species 
was not present. While Say, Harris, Fitch, and Uhler all gave atten- 
tion to this group of insects, and their studies together run back to 
1820, they naturally could not be expected to recognize all that might 
have occurred, even in their respective localities. However, absence 
of records, especially in the case of such good collectors and acute 
observers, is in some degree presumptive evidence of nonoccurrence 
in the case of a species so abundant as this, and if we assume an 
introduction of the species at some period closely prior to its first 
notice we must recognize a rapid spread over the whole country, as 
it is stated by Van Duzee in 1894 to “occupy North America from 
Ontario and Connecticut to Alaska and California and south to 
Mississippi.”’ There is in the records concerning the species in this 
country no sequence of dates which furnishes us any basis for tracing 
any dispersal from some center of introduction, as records for such 
