“Through their beauty and variety of 
colour and exquisite forme, they do bring 
to a liberal and gentle minde the remem- 
brance of honestie, comlinesse and all kinds 
of virtues; for it would be unseemly for 
him that doth look upon and handle faire 
and beautiful things, and who frequenteth 
and is conversant in faire and beautiful 
places, to have his minde not faire alsoe.”’ 
* 
2 * 
“Si nomina nescis, perit et cognitio 
rerum.” . 
hree-quarters of a century ago, the French Entomologist Dufour wrote 
of the Hemiptera, “cet ordre d’insectes se trouve un des plus négligés, 
des plus arriérés, soit pour la connaissance des espéces, soit surtout sous le 
rapport de leurs moeurs, de leurs habitudes et de leur genre de vie’ }). 
The same is true to day. <A host of new genera and species, indeed, 
has been described, and some semblance of classification, mostly based upon 
the adult stage alone, set forth, but there are no passably recent Catalogues 
in many of the groups, none at all in others, while those that exist are 
deficient in detailed geographical distribution, and exhibit an antiquated 
nomenclature at variance with the rules of priority. 
In Biology and Anatomy, there has been no attempt in modern times 
to associate the scattered notes that have been published on life-histories, 
food-plants, parasites, embryology and so forth, the most recent, indeed, dating 
back sixty five years ”). 
And yet “there is probably no Order of Insects that is so directly 
connected with the welfare of the human race as the Hemiptera; indeed, if 
anything were to exterminate the enemies of Hemiptera, we ourselves should 
probably be starved in the course of a few months’’?). It is not alone the 
exhaustion consequent upon the rapid draining of the plant’s juices by the 
almost microscopic setae of the Hemipteron, that is so deleterious, it is the 
addition of the horde of fungus spores which so often subsequently attack 
the wounded surface, and quickly multiplying, penetrate into the tissues of 
the plant, causing decay and death *). 
Such injurious insects as the Bed-bug (Clinocoris lectularius), Chinch-bug 
(Blissus leucopterus), Cotton-stainers (Dysdercus spp.), Sugar-cane leaf-hoppers 
(Perkinsiella spp. etc.), the Plant-lice (Aphidae), Mealy-bugs and Scales (Coccidae), 
are familiar even to the “Man-in-the-street”’, and the damage occasioned all 
1) 1833 Mém. sav. étr. Acad. France. IV. 437. 
*) Amyot et Serville. 1843. Histoire naturelle des Insectes. Hémiptéres. pp. I— 
LXXVI et 1—676; Pls. 1—12. 
8) D. Sharp. 1901. Cambr. Nat. Hist. VI. 533. 
4) Kirkaldy. 1906. Bull. Haw. Planters’ Sta. I. 271. 
