May — July iSSg. 



PSYCHE. 



211 



NORTH AMERICAN TYPHLOCYBINI. 



BY CHARLES WILLIAM WOODWORTH, FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. 



Although the prettiest and daintiest 

 of the whole family, the group typhlo- 

 cybini is the least known to entomolo- 

 gists, at least in this country In order 

 to call the attention of collectors to 

 them I will attempt to straighten out 

 the generic groups into which they are 

 arranged and review what is kn^wn 

 about our native species. 



The insects composing this group 

 were included by Linnaeus, Fabricius 

 and Zetterstedt in the old genus Cica- 

 da and by Germar, Herrich-Schafier 

 and Say in Tettigonia. In 183^ Curtis 

 (Ent. mag. v. i) made for these insects 

 a new genus for which he proposed the 

 name Eiipteryx and cited C. -pictae 

 Fabr. as the type. He did not have 

 correct views as to the limitation of the 

 genus he established for we find him in 

 his later works including in it some 

 insects belonging to the genus Cicadula. 

 The *iL'5!T year, 1SS3, Germar (Silb. 

 Rev. Ent. v. i.) applied the name 

 Typhlocyba to the same insects and his 

 name has been generally adopted by 

 entomologists although the English 

 hemipterologists have stoutly contested 

 for the priority of Eupteryx. In pro- 

 posing the name Germar simply men- 

 tions the following species as forming 

 the genus: '•''Cicada aurata., urticae 

 vittata^ picta., quercus^ Fabr., etc.'' 

 Now it is evident that one of these 

 species must be taken as the type of the 





genus and as all except qiierctis belong- 

 to Eiipteryx in its most restricted 

 sense this species is the type. The 

 name Typhlocyba has been used as far 

 as I can make out only for insects of the 

 groupj/ typhlocybini possibly Fitch and 

 Walsh may have included a few species 

 of GnatJiodes and Cicadula. 



In 1S40 Zetterstedt (Insecta Lappon- 

 ica) included the species of this group 

 in his genus Cicadula., but as I have 

 already shown (Psyche, v. 5, p. 75) the 

 genus Cicadula as first and naturally 

 restricted excludes these forms. In 1S50 

 Hardy (Trans. Tyneside nat. field club, 

 p. 423) published a new British genus 

 Dicraneura which seems to have been- 

 for a long time unnoticed, partly per- 

 haps on account of its obscure place of 

 publication and partly on account of the 

 indisposition of European entomologists 

 to dismember the old genus Typhlocyba. 

 The next year Fitch (Rep. on state cab. 

 Nat. Hist. N. Y. 1851, p. 62-64) ignor- 

 ing or overlooking the genera already 

 proposed made two new genera Ery- 

 th7-oneura and Empoa for our North 

 American species. These he separated 

 by the possession of a quadrate cell in 

 the apex of the elytron in the first and a 

 triangular one in the second genus, but 

 this character is not of generic, or even 

 of specific value as can be proven by- 

 examining a large series of specimens 

 of any species. I have even seen the 



/^J? 







