to the British Hemiptera Heteroptera. 95 
include all the Hemiptera Heteroptera known to him, putting 
C. lectularius at their head. Fabricius, who seems to have 
delighted in capricious changes, then applied it to various 
forms of Scutelleride, Pentatomide, &c., Fieber eventually 
retaining it for Pentatoma vernale and its allies prasinum and 
dissimile : but it is rejected altogether by Messrs. Douglas and 
Scott as well as by H. H. Dohrn, Flor, and Barensprung. In 
its old classical sense, as Linnzus doubtless intended it, it 
keeps its place in the works of Latreille, Westwood, Blanchard, 
Gerstaecker, and apparently in most authors conversant with 
scone entomology. With one exception, that can be satis- 
actorily accounted for and need not be explained here, there 
is not a single Linnean genus, so far as I know, in the whole 
animal kingdom, that has not been adopted by zoologists; and 
the rule has been, apparently, to take the best-known species, 
which have been generally the commonest, as the types of 
the illustrious Swede. y the Fabrician name Acanthia* 
should have been preferred, it is difficult to say, seeing that 
species belonging to various modern genera are included under 
it, and therefore that it is as indefinite (if that be the objection) 
as the Linnean Cimex. In the same way Cydnus, Fab., has been 
discarded entirely by Messrs. Douglas and Scott, who refer the 
_ single British species retained under that name by Dr. Fieber 
to Sehirus of Amyot and Serville, who in their turn get rid of 
dnus by applying it to an obscure Indian insect. Again, 
r. Dallas, m his British Museum List, gives the name of 
Aithus to the Cydnus as understood by Fieber, and applies 
Cydnus to another genus—Brachypelta. Dr.Gerstaecker takes 
. morio as the type, a species placed by Fieber under Sehirus, 
and by Birensprung, who adopts the latter genus, under Cyd- 
nus: the difference between the two genera cannot be very 
great; and Sehirus, therefore, may as well sink. Tetyra, another 
Fabrician genus, is converted into Hurygaster by Dr. Fieber, 
who is followed by Messrs. Douglas and Scott: Drs. Gerst- 
__* Looking a little further into this genus Acanthia, we find that Fabri- 
cius tae it in 1794 in his Ent. Syst., Cimezx lectularius, the first spe- 
cies, being followed by forty-four more ; in 1803, in his Syst. Rhyng., he 
confines it to two species, the first keeping its place and a new one added, 
the rest being dispersed. But in 1796, Latreille, in his Précis de Caract. 
&c,, had so defined the genus as to limit it to the species for which Fabri- 
cius afterwards proposed the name of Salda. Furthermore, Latreille, in 
his Hist. Nat. des Crust. et des Ins. (published in 1802), redescribes the 
— giving Acanthia zostere (Fabricius’s second species in the Ent. 
yst.) as the type, leaving the first as the true type of Cimex. In this he 
was followed by Germar, Curtis, and Westwood, Salda to them being a 
synonym of Acanthia. It would be increasing the confusion if it were 
now attempted to restore dcanthia to the place to which its priority en- 
titles it; the best that can be done is to drop it altogether. 
g# 
