XXXIX. Descriptions of new species belonging to the 
Homopterous family Cicadide. By W. L. Distant. 
[Read December 7th, 1881.] 
Tue following descriptions are offered to the Society, 
anticipatory of a future monographic revision of the Cica- 
did@, a family which has perhaps been the more neglected 
owing to the involved nature of the work in which the 
fine collection of these insects contained in the British 
Museum were described. This, therefore, renders an 
examination of Walker’s types indispensable, and, from 
the nature of that author’s descriptions, it is questionable 
whether without such comparison any work could be 
effected without being more or less surcharged with 
synonymy. As regards the last subject, 1 have incorpo- 
rated none of my collected notes here, preferring to 
publish them subsequently in a more complete form. 
In the descriptive nomenclature which I have here 
adopted, and which I have followed and similarly ex- 
plained when treating the Central American fauna (Biol. 
Centr. Am. Rhynch. Hom., p. 1, 1881), the following 
should perhaps be clearly stated. 
For the venation of the tegmina I have followed Stal, 
but differ from that author in the use of the term 
‘“‘scutellum,” which in my opinion is the ‘‘mesonotum,”’ 
and in which view | am supported by Burmeister and West- 
wood. The “ scutellum,” as used by Germar, apparently 
equals the ‘‘ metathoracic cross” of Uhler, and is con- 
sidered here, in agreement with Burmeister, and, as 
may be proved by easy dissection, as part of the meso- 
notum, and is here alluded to as the ‘ basal cruci- 
form elevation” of the same. I have also followed 
Westwood in the numeration of the abdominal segments, 
of which six are acknowledged, the basal one being 
described as first and the apical one as sixth. 
Of the species here described, three are Neotropical, 
three Ethiopian, thirteen Oriental, one Palearctic, one 
Australian, and one from the Pacific region. 
TRANS. ENT. Soc. 1881.—PparT Iv. (DEC.) 
