to the British Hemiptera Heteroptera. 279 



old name Cimex^ under ■which Linnseus was content to include 

 all the Hemiptera Heteroptera known to him." Now this is 

 not strictly the fact ; for both in the ' Fauna Suecica ' and in 

 the ' Systema Naturse ' there are, besides Cimex^ the genera 

 Notonecta and Nejm^ both of which latter names have been 

 retained by all authors. With respect to Cimex the case is 

 different. In the ' Systema,' where Linne first characterized 

 his genera, the following characters are given for Cimex : — 

 " Rostrum inflexum. Antennce thorace longiores. Alee 4, 

 cruciato-comj)licat^ : superioribus antice coriaceis. Dorsum 

 planum thorace marginato. Pedes cursorii." Yet imme- 

 diately afterwards he puts the exceptional section '' *a* 

 Aptera," containing only one species. It is clear therefore 

 that Linne never could have intended the apterous lectii- 

 larius to be the type of his winged genus. Indeed, look- 

 ing at the very heterogeneous nature of the species com- 

 posing the genus as left by him, and the breadth of the 

 characters laid down, it seems equally clear that he had no 

 idea of a generic type, or that the first or other species on his 

 list should be taken as representative. Fabricius must have 

 seen this ; and when he had to break up the Linnean genus, 

 he very properly eliminated the exceptional Jectularius. It is 

 true he at first (in the ' Entom. System.') placed it under the 

 title of Acanthia at the head of many unrelated species ,• but 

 he afterwards (in the ' Syst. Rhyng.') restricted the genus to 

 lectularius and another close ally. In the interval between 

 the publication of these works, Latreille, having retained 

 Cimex for lectularius^ applied the Fabrician name Acanthia 

 to other species ; but Fabricius, coming after him, showed, in 

 the ' Syst. Rhyng.,' that Latreille had not rightly interpreted 

 his idea. Thus Mr. Pascoe's objection that " it is difficult to 

 say why the Fabrician name Acanthia should have been 

 preferred," is not tenable. The excision of Linux's first section 

 under another name being valid, the question remained which 

 of the other nine sections into which Linne had divided his 

 genus was to be taken as representative ; and, considering that 

 each of them equally conformed to the characters laid down 

 primarily, it is no wonder that no two subsequent authors, 

 including those "most conversant with general entomology " 

 (Fabricius, Burmeister, Germar, Kolenati, Zetterstedt &c.), 

 agreed — showing also that there was no generally received 

 rule by which their proceedings were to be regulated. If the 

 principle apparently adopted for Notonecta and Nepa^ of taking 

 the first-mentioned species as the type, were esteemed binding, 

 then it is curious that the first two of the section *i* are 

 within Mr. Pascoe's inhibited line of "extra-European species," 



