of the Gryllina ofMaclLeay. 431 



Acrtda, Bttlla, Acheta, Tettigonia, and Locusta. Of these all, 

 except the necond (Bulla)^ represented natural sections of the 

 tribe. When Fabricius undertook the new modelling of this 

 tribe according to his own system, he discarded three of Linne's 

 names, turning Acrida into Truxalis, which seems a mistake for 

 Troxalis (rfu^xXis) ; Bulla into Acri/dium, from Geoifroy, re- 

 stricting the name very properly to those minute Grylli whose 

 prothorax terminates behind in a long process that covers the 

 abdomen ; retaining Acheta for the Crickets ; very properly re- 

 jecting Tettigonia, a Greek diminutive, signifying a small Tet- 

 tix or Cicada, but in its room, unhappily following GeofFroy in 

 giving the name of Locusta to those Grasshoppers whose females 

 are distinguished by an ensiform ovipositor, and taking it away 

 from the true Locusts, to which he gave the name of Gryllus, 

 properly belonging to the Cricket. 



Under Bulla, Linne had included not only those Cape insects 

 resembling a bladder {Pneumo?'a, Thunb.), which the name 

 suited, but some of his own Locustce, and the Acrydia of Fabricius. 

 Latreille has not been so happy as to succeed in his endeavours to 

 amend Fabricius's nomenclature. With great propriety, how- 

 ever, he restored to the Cricket its ancient Latin name Gryllas, 

 and separated from it Gryllotalpa and Tridactylus ; but led 

 astray by the Gallic passion to uphold names imposed by a French 

 author, per fas atque nefas, he has retained GeofFroy's name of 

 Acridium ; thus absurdly expressing, by a diminutive signifying 

 a little Locust, that far-famed and wide-ravaging plague, the 

 terror of half the regions of the earth, the great Locust. As 

 Geoffroy included the Acridium of Fabricius in his genus, it would 

 with much more propriety have been restricted io that minute 

 animal : Tetrix, by which M. Latreille has distinguished it, ap- 

 pears to be a corruption of the Greek Tetiix, or the Cicada, and 

 therefore is equally improper with Tettigonia for one of the Gryllina. 

 I think, on these accounts, that Dr. Leach has done a great service 

 to the science by restoring the name of Locusta to the real locust 

 of the ancients; but that of Conocephalus, by which, after 

 Thunberg, he would designate the Locusta of Geoffroy and 

 Fabricius, seems less proper. It is very well when applied to those 



2 g2 



