BRITISH CICADA. 



VOL. II. 



ACOCEPHALINi©. 



Some of the genera and species comprised in the 

 above section possess very definite and sahent charac- 

 ters, whilst others show morphological details which 

 are much less obvious, and divergencies which urge 

 themselves less on the attention. The more cogent 

 the arguments become in favour of the doctrine of the 

 mutability of species, the more necessary will be the 

 task of the future worker to review what has been 

 already done in synonymy, and to decide on the 

 claims which certain groups have to separate them- 

 selves from their allied neighbours. 



Under such like considerations Dr. Victor Signoret, 

 in his "Essai sur les Jassides," * eliminates certain 

 genera from Fieber and Puton's Catalogues, taking for 

 his primary guide the position of the ocelli, which he 

 maintains to be very important as a character — " utile 

 et facile a constater, car il manque tres-rarement." 

 Thus he groups the Acocephalides of Puton and "les 

 Jassides ou Cicadelles " (which last names he considers 

 to be synonymous) under two heads, viz., those genera 

 which show the ocelli on the vertex itself, and those 

 which show themselves on the border of the head. 



Amongst the first he places the insects represented 

 in the British Fauna as Eupelix, Acocephalus, and 

 Strongylocephalus. Amongst the second he places 



=■= Extrait ' Ann. de la Soc. Entomol. de France,' Aout, 1878. 

 VOL. II, B 



