424 Mr. F. P. Pascoe on the 



black ; tegmina fulvous green ; wings with a pellucid border 

 gradually narrowing posteriorly, the anterior quarter minia- 

 ceous red, the remainder purplish brown (except that at the 

 base there is a reddish tinge), the veins white ; abdomen dull 

 yellowish, glossy ; legs greenish, anterior coxa paler. 



In the British Museum this elegant little species bears the 

 MS. name C. venezuelce^ Bates ; but, as it is now shown to 

 extend beyond Venezuela, I have not adopted that name. I 

 took a single specimen by sweeping among some low bushes 

 in a naturally open space probably a mile or so long, and 

 about half that breadth, with the primajval forest all around, 

 a mile or two beyond the little village of Nazare, near Par,4 ; 

 but, although I returned to the spot several times, I never 

 succeeded in finding another. 



This species will be figured in an early number of ' Aid 

 to the Identification of Insects.' 



XLVIII. — Note on the Classijication of the Homoptera. 

 By Fkancis p. Pascoe, 



Considerable difterence of opinion exists as to the relative 

 value of groups below the rank of orders among tiie Insecta; 

 and nowhere perhaps is it more remarkable than with the 

 Hemiptera *. Entomologists in the middle ages, ^. e. from 

 about 1830 to 1860, were content to divide the Homopterous 

 section of them, exclusive of the Phytophthiria or Sterno- 

 rhynchi, into three families, while the Heteropterous section 

 had eleven (Amyot and Serville, 1843). Now we have 

 at most five families of the former; but how many of the 

 latter I am not prepared to say, Messrs. Douglas and Scott, 

 in their ' British Hemiptera-Heteroptera ' (1865)^ having not 

 less than sixty-five families for the comparatively few species 

 of these islands alone. For most these so-called families only 

 rank as subordinate groups ; but the fact shows how widely 

 opinions differ. In my little work on Zoological Classifi- 

 cation (2nd edit. 1880) I proposed thirteen familcs f for the 



* Hemiptera was one of the four orders into which Liniiasus divided 

 the Insecta iu the first edition of his ' Systema Natnra3 ' (17oo). Fabii- 

 cins in 1775 proposed the term Ryugota for tlie same order (now Rliyu- 

 chota"). 



t Wrongly Cephalelus and Uhypa were placed under Oercopidas instead 

 of lassidee. It is true that this approximation is substantially the same 

 as Walker's (Brit. Mus. List Iloniop. 6.37 ct seq.). Phenax seems to lie 

 between Cixiida^ and Lystridte ; Uktiiaplwra has the cephalic prolonga- 

 tion of Fukoridce. 



