THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



97 



are good at guessing, they will probably guess what 

 species of insect is referred to by the writer. My 

 guess is "Plant-louse;" but then unfortunately I 

 am no Yankee — only a Western man. 



"A new destroyer of wheat has made its appearance in 

 the wheat fields in the shape of a small insect, which ap- 

 pears on the blade, varying from one to four in number, 

 and which is producing sad havoc. The attention of Mr. 

 Embry was first called to the appearance of the insect 

 and its destructive powers by another old farmer of the 

 same county, Mr. Henry Summerlin. The two together 

 have watched the progress of this insect, and what with 

 the present appearance of the wheat crop in this vicinity, 

 and the de tractive powers of the insect itself, have come 

 to the conclusion that great damage will be done to the 

 wheat crop in Carroll County if it be not totally destroy- 

 ed. The insect, Mr. Erabry states, has never before made 

 its appearance in that county." — {N. Y. Sem. Tribune, 

 June 15, 1866.) 



Popular names for Insects. 



BT BENJ. D. WALSH, M. A. 



There is nothing more puzzling to an Entomolo- 

 gist than the use of mere names, without any de- 

 scription of form, size, texture or color, in record- 

 ing the ravages of Noxious Insects. One farmer 

 says that the weevil is taking his wheat in the 

 granary ; another says that the weevil is taking his 

 wheat in the field. One would naturally suppose 

 that both were speaking of the same insect; where- 

 as the first refers to what is really a true weevil or 

 snout-beetle, belonging to the same great group as 

 the common "Curculio;" and the second refers to 

 what is not a Weevil at all, nor even a Beetle, but 

 a two-winged fly belonging to the same Order as 

 the Musketoes, House-flies, Horse-flies, &c., namely 

 the Wheat-midge. In some parts of the country, 

 indeed, this last insect is called, by way of distinc- 

 tion, " the Red Weevil," precisely as a miserable 

 bony kind of fish is called a "Red Horse" in the 

 Valley of the Mississippi, to distinguish it from the 

 animals that draw our buggies. But just as often 

 as not this two-winged fly is called purely and 

 simply "the weevil;" which is much as if a Western 

 fisherman were to say that he had got half a hun- 

 dred "Horses" in his wagon-bed. 



If, however, we are puzzled sometimes by the 

 popular names given to insects on this side of the 

 Rocky Mountains, where we are tolerably familiar 

 with the different species that afllict the farmer, 

 how must it be with the Noxious Insects of the 

 Pacific Coast, almost all of which are unknown to 

 science, at least so far as their habits and transfor- 

 mations are concerned ? Probably more than, one 

 half of the insects of California, &c. belong to spe- 

 cies which do not occur in Eastern America. Yet 

 when farmers emigrated thither from the East, they 

 very naturally gave to native Califoraian insects 

 the same popular names, as they had been in the 

 habit of giving to Eastern species; just as the first 

 English settlers in America called an American 

 species of thrush a " Robin," after the European 

 Robin, which is not a thrush but a warbler. Here, 

 then, we have error heaped upon error and confu- 

 sion worse confounded. 



I have been led into the above remarks from 



seeing the following article in the California 

 Farmer of May 10, 1866: 



Armt WoRjr.—We hear that large numbers of the fly 

 which produces the army worm passed through and over 

 the city last Monday afternoon. Vegetation in California 

 presents just now delicious repasts for the hungry, raven- 

 ous cTea.tures.~Sacra7,iento Bee of April 25th. 



Our Eastern Army worm is produced, not by a 

 fly but by a brown moth or miller; and besides, 

 the great bulk of these moths appear, not in the 

 spring (April) but in the summer, varying accord- 

 ing to the latitude from June to September. There 

 can be little doubt that the so-called Californian 

 Army-worm is altogether distinct from our Army- 

 worm; just as in the Southern States a moth that 

 infests the Cotton-plant in the larva state (the Noc- 

 tua xyliiiaot Say) is often called the Army-worm, 

 though it is quite different from our Army-worm, 

 {the Leucaniatmipunctaot Ilaworth.) But what 

 is this Californian species ? "Aye, there's the rub." 

 And what are its habits ? How does it operate ? 

 What plants does it feed on ? Is the larva legless, 

 or if it has legs how many has it got ? Is the per- 

 fect insect a Moth, or a Saw-fly, or a Plant-feeding 

 Beetle, or a Bug ? Will not some kind Californian 

 enlighten us all upon these and a host of other such 

 particulars ? And ahfve all, will he not send us 

 specimens of the perfect insect, as well as the his- 

 tory of its life? You cannot be too precise or too 

 circumstantial in stating all that you know about 

 it. Points apparently quite trivial in its Natural 

 History may lead the way to some effective method 

 of counterworking it, which may eventually save 

 millions of dollars to your State. 



Scientific Kames. 



f BENJ. D. WALSH, M. A. 



We continually hear people object to what they 

 call the long crack-jaw names, used by Scientific 

 men to designate different species of insects or of 

 birds or of mammals; and much misconception and 

 some ignorance prevails on the subject in the popu- 

 lar mind. It is commonly supposed, for example, 

 that the first discoverer of a new species invents 

 out of his own head two purely arbitrary names for 

 it, the first of which is called the generic name and 

 the second the specific name. In reality this sup- 

 position is one half of it almost entirely incorrect, 

 and the other half of it only partially correct. The 

 specific name is indeed fixed by the arbitrary dis- 

 cretion of the first person that describes (not the 

 first person that rf(scot)e>-s) a hitherto undescribed 

 species, but in nine cases out of ten the generic 

 name was established long ago by some other writer, 

 who laid down certain characters in which a certain 

 more or less extensive group of species all agree, 

 which group receives a fixed name from him and 

 is called in scientific l:uiguage a genus. For in- 

 stance under the old genus Oak (scientifically 

 Quercus) are comprehended many species described 

 by various Botanists, the White Oak, the Black 

 Oak, the Burr Oak, &c.; under the old genus 

 Duck (scientifically Anas) are comprehended many 

 species described by various Ornithologists, the 



