THE CENTRONOTID^E, 13? 



these latter being exclusively tropical. Two or three 

 small but curiously shaped genera, as Delphax, &c., are 

 placed at the end of this family, although their affini- 

 ties are at present uncertain. 



(126). The horned cicadas, or the CENTRONOTID^E, 

 constitute our third great division. The whole insect 

 world cannot produce such extraordinary and eccentric 

 shapes as are exhibited among these little creatures : 

 were they of a moderately large size, any one might be 

 exhibited as a monster, and the most fanciful imagin- 

 ation would be sorely taxed to invent any thing more 

 grotesque than Nature herself has produced. The Cen- 

 tronotidce, with very few exceptions, are exclusively found 

 in the forests of Tropical America, where they live, fre- 

 quently in little societies of their own, upon the young 

 shoots of plants, which they probe and suck as the 

 Aphides do in Europe; for these latter insects, so far as 

 our own personal observations have gone, are not found 

 in these regions. This fact affords an additional rea- 

 son in support of our belief that these two families are. 

 analogous, and that both are types of the ruminating 

 quadrupeds, in other words, rasorial. How little the Cen- 

 tronotidcB are known, may be gathered from the fact, that 

 out of near a hundred species found by us in Tropical 

 America, not more than one half are described in books. 

 Yet, abundant as those insects are in those regions, which 

 may be termed their metropolis, only two species appear 

 to inhabit England. One of these, however, Centronotus 

 cornutus, is not uncommon, and gives a very good idea 

 of the whole family. Its head and breast are larger 

 than all the rest of the body ; the former is thick, broad, 

 and truncate, but of a very different form to any among 

 the Cicadidce or the Flatldce. The chief singularity, 

 however, lies in the thorax, which is enormously deve- 

 loped : on each side arises an acute spine, pointing 

 outwards, so as to resemble the horns of a bull, or rumi- 

 nating quadruped; while the hinder part is prolonged 

 into another spine parallel with the body, and which it is 

 obviously intended to protect : the wings are transparent^ 



