Reply to Dr. ßorgroth's „Note oii Mr. Kirby's recent 

 paper oii tlie Hemiptera of Ceylon", 



By W. F. Kirby, F. L. S., F. E. S., etc. etc. 



My attention has just been called to Dr. Bergroth's 

 article in the Wiener Entomologische Zeitung, vol. XI, pag. 225, 

 226 (Sept. 1892), and although I greatly dislike the waste of 

 tinie involved in eontroversy, I cannot leave the present attaek 

 unnoticed, lest my silence should be misconstrued. I have pro- 

 bably seen much more bad entnmological work than Dr. Berg- 

 roth, but should be sorry for my own sake to treat even the 

 worst offenders with such discourtesy. 



The forefront of my ofFending appears to be that I have 

 overrated W a 1 k e r and underrated S t ä 1 , and especially that 

 I did not follow the system of tlie latter in my paper. Had I 

 been writing a monographic revision, or a systematic Catalogue 

 of a group, I should of course have utilised Stal's system to 

 a greater or less extent, but I do not find that the multiplica- 

 tion of genera and families is any advantage in dealing with 

 a limited fauna. The species is the unit of Entomology , not 

 the genus. 



In working out the Cinghalese Hemiptera I might indeed 

 have attempted to refer every species to the exact sub- 

 division proposed by Stal, but I should have run a much 

 greater risk of some of them being misinterpreted or overlooked. 

 than by adopting a simpler arrangement, and placing them 

 under more comprehensive genera. 



It was of StA l's own genera that I spoke as retpiiring 

 a thorough and much-needed revision. Stal's synopses of the 

 genera of various families of insects offen consist raerelj' of 

 more or less elaborate tables. He did not live to revise the 

 whole of these himself, and some of his genera were never fullj^ 



Wiener Entomologische Zeitung, XI. Jahrg., 10. Heft (25. December 1802J. 



2:-i 



