to the British Hemiptera Heteroptera. 95 



include all the Hemiptera Heteroptera known to him, putting 

 C. hctularius at their head. Fabricius, who seems to have 

 delighted in capricious changes, then applied it to various 

 forms of Scutelleridee, Pentatomidje, &c., Fieber eventually 

 retaining it for Pentatoma vernaJe and its allies prasinum and 

 dissimile : but it is rejected altogether by Messrs. Douglas and 

 Scott as well as by H. H. Dolirn, Flor, and Barensprung. In 

 its old classical sense, as Linnaeus doubtless intended it, it 

 keeps its place in the works of Latreille, Westwood, Blanchard, 

 Gerstaecker, and apparently in most authors conversant with 

 general entomology. With one exception, that can be satis- 

 factorily 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. Why 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 Gydnus^ 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 

 Gydnus by applying it to an obscure Indian insect. Again, 

 Mr. Dallas, in his British Museum List, gives the name of 

 JEthus to the Gydnus as understood by Fieber, and applies 

 Gydnus to another genus — Brachypelta. Dr. Gerstaecker takes 

 G. morio as the type, a species placed by Fieber under Sehirus, 

 and by Barensprung, who adopts the latter genus, under Gyd- 

 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 Eurygaster 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 proposed it in 1794 in his Ent. Syst., Ciinex 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 Precis 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, Lati-eille, in 

 his Hist. Nat. des Crust, et des Ins. (published in 1802), redescribes the 

 genus, giving Acanthia zosferce (Fabricius's second species in the Ent. 

 Syst.) 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 

 sjrnonym of Acanthia. It would be increasing the confusion if it were 

 now attempted to restore Acanthia to the place to which its priority en- 

 titles it ; the best that can be done is to drop it altogether. 



8* 



