Maskell. — Note on an Aphidian insect, 17 



Observations on the name " Cheemes " or " Keemes." 



Much confusion has grown round this name, which has been made by 

 different writers to do duty in various distinct directions. Linmeus and 

 Fabricius included under it Coccidse, Aphididse, and Psyllidse ; Passerini 

 restricts it to the Aphididas ; Kaltenbach, Buckton, and others seem to 

 include in it Aphididas and Coccidaa ; G-eoffroy, Targioni-Tozzetti, Signoret, 

 and others restrict it to the Coccidas. 



Now, there is so marked a distinction between the families just men- 

 tioned that it seems simply absurd to confound them under one name. 

 A number of characters which can only be well made out under the micro- 

 scope distinguish them completely ; but, apart from these, the fact that in 

 the Coccidaa the females are always, without any exception, apterous, whilst 

 in the Aphididaa the females in certain stages have four wings, is a perfectly 

 sufficient cause for separation. Attempts have been made at various times to 

 introduce a clearer classification, but, amongst at least English writers, with 

 little or no success. This appears to me to be due in a great measure to the 

 very small knowledge possessed by English naturalists of the family Coccidaa, 

 a family which is apparently not abundant in England except upon exotic 

 plants. In point of fact, most of these writers seem not to be aware of 

 anything more than the single genus " Coccus," to which, although in 

 reality it contains only the single species G. cacti (cochineal), they relegate 

 every insect of the family.* It is from some such want of knowledge that 

 the name of " Chermes " or " Kermes " has been given to many quite 

 distinct insects, even in some cases to Psyllidaa. 



I am quite well aware that names are not an end, but a means to an 

 end, and that a rigid and precise purism may be often absurd ; yet I see no 

 reason why accuracy should not be aimed at in the case of minute insects 

 as in the case of larger animals ; and I can fancy the chorus of indignant 

 and contemptuous expostulation which would greet an ornithologist com- 

 bining under one genus a hawk and a magpie, or a geologist including a 

 trilobite amongst the saurians. 



The name " Chermes " or " Kermes " is, so to speak, as old as the hills. 

 It .appears to have been originally given by the Persians either to the insect 

 itself which produced for them a red dye (not cochineal), or to the dye thus 

 produced. Linnaeus applied the name to an insect which he termed Kermes 

 ilicis, and unfortunately began the confusion to which I am referring, as he 



* Thus, for example, Mr. Beck, in the Journal of the Eoy. Microsc. Society, describes 

 at some length what he calls a " Coccus " of the apple tree, which is, of course, Mytilaspis 

 pomorum ; and Mr. Buckton (British Aphides), who mentions constantly " Coccus," refers 

 to an insect as " now Coccus ilicis,'''' which is not a Coccus at all, but a combination long 

 ago abandoned of Kermes bauhinii and Kermes vcrmilio* 

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