August 1892.] 



PSYCHE. 



305 



THE NORTH AMERICAN JASSIDAE ALLIED TO THAMNOTETTIX. 



BY E. P. VAN DUZEE. BUFFALO, N. Y. 



No attempt has yet been made accu- 

 rately to place the North American 

 species of Jassidae allied to Thamno- 

 tettix and Athysanus. In the present 

 paper I propose to do this for the more 

 common of our described forms. 



The English and continental ento- 

 mologists by no means agree in their 

 use of such generic terms as Cicadula, 

 Thamnotettix, Limotettix and Athy- 

 sanus, but Fieber's system, adopted by 

 Puton, is most widely used on the 

 continent. This restricts Cicadula to 

 those species in which the outer branch 

 of the first sector of the elytra is obso- 

 lete or nearly so, thus leaving two anti- 

 apical areoles instead of three, as in 

 Thamnotettix. The old rule of placing 

 the first species described under the 

 older genera as their type is thus dis- 

 regarded here, but it seems to me justi- 

 fiably so, as Zetterstedt's first species 

 of Cicadula (quadrinotata) properly be- 

 longs to Ids preceding genus, Thamno- 

 tettix. 



As stated byfMr. C. W. Wood worth 

 (Psyche, v. 5, p. 75, 1888) Sahlberg 

 in his " Cicadariae " (1871), unwar- 

 rantably places Cicadula in the Typhlo- 

 cybini, substituting it for Fieber's genus 

 Kybos. Then he erected his genus 

 Limotettix (not Limnotettix as errone- 

 ously written by Mr. Woodworth) , and 

 placed in it a selection from several of 

 the genera as arranged by Fieber, among 



which may be found most of the species 

 of Cicadula as listed in M. Puton's 

 latest catalogue. 



We cannot accept Mr. James 

 Edwards' disposition of these genera as 

 published in his "Synopsis of the 

 British Homoptera," nor Mr. Wood- 

 worth's limitation of the genus Cicadula 

 without discarding our present artificial 

 arrangement of this group of the Jas- 

 sidae for one still more artificial. 



Probably most of the genera men- 

 tioned below, viz., Cicadula, Limotettix, 

 Chlorotettix, Thamnotettix, Eutettix and 

 Athysanus might be considered as sub- 

 genera of but one, or possibly two, 

 generic groups represented by Thamno- 

 tettix and Athysanus. They are cer- 

 tainly unsatisfactory in their characters 

 and quite artificial, as M. Lethierry 

 says of Cicadula, "Nous croyons devoir 

 accepter le genre 11011 comme un genre 

 naturel . . . mais comme un genre 

 artificiel, destiner a faciliter la connais- 

 sance et l'etude des especes." But 

 where large groups of species are as 

 poor in structural characters as are the 

 Jassidae we must form our genera so as 

 to lighten the labor of the student as 

 much as possible. 



Cicadula as above restricted includes 

 in our fauna three described species, 

 sexnotata, variata and punctifrons of 

 Fallen, all common to Europe and 

 America, and a few forms still unde- 



