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LV. 



ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE NAMES PEOPOSED FOR 

 GENERA OF ORTHOPTERA, PEEVIOUS TO 1840. By 

 W. F. KIRBY, F.L.S., F.E.S., Assistant in Zoological De- 

 partment, British Museum (Natural History), South Kensington. 

 (Communicated by A. G. More, M.R.D.Soc.) 



[Read June 18, 1890.] 



While engaged in the arrangement of a typical collection of 

 Orthoptera for the public Entomological Room of the British 

 Museum, I found it necessary to investigate the proper use of the 

 older generic names ; and there proved to be so much confusion and 

 uncertainty in their use that I determined to work out the subject 

 thoroughly, down to 1839, when Serville published his " Histoire 

 Naturelle des Insectes Orthopteres," which forms the basis of all 

 recent works on this Order. 



In his earlier works Linne regarded the Orthoptera as Coleop- 

 tera, but subsequently classed them with Hemiptera. This is 

 fortunate, because Eetzius, in 1783, restricted the term Hemiptera 

 to the Order for which Olivier, in 1789, proposed the name 

 Orthoptera, by which it is now known. But as the Cimicidai are 

 the original types of the Linnean Order Hemiptera, this proceeding 

 of Eetzius cannot affect the usual application of that name. 

 Dermaptera, a term which Eetzius employed to include the genera 

 Cimex and Nepa, if retained at all, must be employed for the 

 Hemiptera Heteroptera, although more recent writers have erro- 

 neously applied the term Dermaptera sometimes to the Forficulidce, 

 and sometimes to the Orthoptera in general. But though we can 

 retain the name Orthoptera, we must reject the sectional names 

 misapplied by Latreille ; for Saltatoria and Gressoria are terms 

 which Eetzius employed long before to designate the Pulicidce and 

 the Linnean Aptera respectively. Many genera proposed by 

 Latreille were originally published by him in a French form, and 



