94 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OP 



by n<> means of primary weight in the first named family, and in the second family I give them no 

 more than secondary importance. What reasons tin' junior editor, for he alone now becomes res- 



1 sible, can assign for so gross a misrepresentation 1 am not able to anticipate. He certainly, 



however, will he able to give some reason for the faith within him. * * * * 



] Lave not the slightest personal feeling in the matter, and I hope that my much respected friend, 



Mr. Riley, State Entomologist of Missouri, will be free to defend the position he has taken against 



inc. 



Now, we believe Dr. Shimer is sincere in stating that he has no personal feeling in the matter, 

 else we should not even n >tice his request. We hope, therefore, that he will believe us when we 

 state that in the few words we are about to pen we are governed by no personal considerations 

 whatever, but by a love of truth for truth's sake. As Dr. Shimer becomes more familiar (and we 

 hope he will so become) with the minute and interesting insects to which he has more especially 

 turned his attention, he will no doubt regret that he ever proposed those two families without lon- 

 ger pondering and considering. 



Regarding the Bark-louse, we will dismiss the subject in a few words, as it is foreign to the 

 topic under consideration. Dr. Shimer, it is true, deserves severe handling for the cool and skep- 

 tical manner in which he refers to the work of all preceding entomologists, and the laughable way 

 in which he arrogates to himself the power of correct observation;-* but at present we will simply 

 accede to his request, as follows : 



We confess that in stating that Dr. Shimer had based his new family, LEriDOSAPHiD.E, upon 

 the occurrence of digituli, we should have qualified our language by inserting "partly" before 

 "upon," since the characters as given by him are, "Four digituli terminated by pulvilli or arolia, 

 and no claw, and the female living beneath a scale or shell-like habitation of her own construct- 

 ing."* But we insist that the proposition of afamily on such grounds was not only unfortunate, 

 but unwarranted, for the following reasons : First, the so-called digituli are not even of generic, 

 much less of family value, as they are nothing but modified hairs, and occur in a more or less per- 

 fect form in all young Coccidce and Aphidce which we have examined, and are acknowledged by the 

 best authorities to be common to both these families. Secondly, the insect in question really has a 

 more or less perfect claw, as we have abundantly demonstrated the present year. Thirdly, the as- 

 sumption! that the scale in all Coccid.e should be part and parcel of the insect itself, is a purely 

 gratuitous one, since there are many other species which live separate from their scales, and since 

 the genus Aspidiotus was especially erected by Bouche for those species which thus live under and 

 seperate from them. Consequently there remains not a single character mentioned by our 

 author but what is well known to belong to the Coccii>-«, and there is not even the slightest excuse 

 imaginable for seperating it from Costa's genus Diaspis, to which it is now correctly referred by 

 Signoret— our highest authority on this family. 



Now let us return to our Grape-leaf louse. We have no trouble in proving by Dr. Shimer's 

 own words that we were perfectly justified in saying that the " digituli " were the " distinguishing 

 features " of his supposed family Dactylosphccridm. The very meaning of the word (globe-fingered) 

 given to the family indicates such to have been the case, and he himself expressly say? :J "The 

 wing neuration of Dactylofphara is synonymous with that of Phylloxera; it is, therefore, upon the 

 other characters that I found this genus." Now what are the other characters? Turning to the 

 family characters given, we find : "Wings four, carried fiat on the back in repose. Antenna- few- 

 jointed. Tarsi composed of one joint terminated by two claws, and from two to six digituli' 

 Honey tubes none ; otherwise resembling AphidtB."§ The only other character given which is not 

 Aphidian is the one-jointed tarsus, which, as we shall presently show, cannot, strictly speaking, be 

 considered a character of our (hill-louse, and which, even if it were, would scarcely warrant the 

 making of a new family. Every other character, including the "digituli," is common to dozens of 

 plant-lice, and the neuration of the insect's wing|| places it beyond any doubt in the genus Pyllox- 



-**Trans. Am. Ent. Soc. I, pp. 371-2. 



* Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, I, p. 372. 



f Ibid, p. ".7 1 . 



t Characters for a supposed new family, p. 5, note; from the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phil., 

 Jan., 1867. 



§ Ibid, p. 1. 

 The neuration of the wing differs slightly from the typical European Phylloxera qui 



the two discoidal veins of the front wing uniting in a fork instead of being i fectly separated. 



On this account Mr. Walsh proposed for our insect, and for certain other species found in hickory 

 galls, which have the same neuration, the generic name of Xerophylla. But it seems tons thai the 

 polymorphism of Ai'iiin.i: has not yet been sufficiently investigated to allow of making even differ- 

 ent species, much less different genera, upon a forked or unforked nervure, for there is frequently 

 much greater difference in specimens coming from the same parents ; and, as we are informed by 

 M. Lichtenstein, the European Phylloxera of the Oak actually presents both kinds of neuration ; 



