240 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARTHROPODS. 



lected in New York, near Lake Erie, and in Indiana, were known to science, but more 

 recently others have been captured in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Georgia, 

 but not in large numbers. It is reported to have been found in the first-named State 

 on pine bushes. An allied species is sometimes seen in Maryland, Virginia, and New 

 Jersey, upon the limbs of small pine-trees which grow on the outskirts of the ' pine 

 barrens.' Other species are common in strips of thinly growing woods of the same 

 kind in Nevada, Montana, and Washington Territory. The name of the group has 

 been taken from the genus Achilus, founded upon an exquisitely beautiful coral red 

 insect inhabiting Australia. 



In the sub-family Cixiida we meet with forms which are widely distributed, and 

 well-known in Europe and North America. On the two continents there are parallel 

 species of several of the genera, which are either ^ery closely related or merely geo- 

 graphical varieties of the original species. Thus, Cixii(s nervosus and C. stigmatus, 

 are to be separated only with difficulty, and so with other species of this, as well as 

 of Oliarus, and other related genera. Our best known North American form is 

 Cixius stigmatus. It has somewhat of a clothes-moth form, with the thorax and base 

 of the wing-covers chestnut brown, the latter usually crossed by two imperfect brown- 

 ish bands, and closely dotted with the same color along the stout veins. The vertical 

 face is coffin-shaped, pale brown above, yellow below, and with the middle carinate 

 line and raised lateral margins also brown. It measures one-third of an inch to tip of 

 the wing-covers, and has some varieties in which the wing-covers are more or less per- 

 meated with a claret-brown color. The variety described above is often very common 

 upon small pine-trees in late summer, where also the young forms appear in the spring 

 and early part of the summer. It is distributed from Canada to Texas, and from New 

 England to the highlands of Georgia. Several other species inhabit North America, 

 one of which is found as far north in British America as its food-tree exists. Other 

 genera of this group, such as Mgndus, with a broader forehead than in Cixius ; QEcleus 

 with a narrow, parallel-sided vertex ; Oliarus with an emarginate base to the head, 

 and five raised lines on the thorax, inhabit the United States, and are represented by 

 numerous species. 



The singular and rare little Sothriocera signoretii is the North American repre- 

 sentative of a genus which has many larger and more showy species in South America. 

 It is a smoke-brown insect, with a square vertex raised each side into quadrangular 

 keeled lobes, with six whitish spots of various sizes on each wing-cover. It lives on 

 alder and other bushes in wet spots, or near running water. At present it is known 

 from Maryland, Georgia, Texas, and Mexico. 



A closely related sub-family, the Delphacida, generally have narrower wing-covers 

 than the foregoing, and, like the better-known forms of that sub-family, belong especi- 

 ally to the temperate region of Europe and America. They are often small, or even 

 minute, and sometimes swarm upon low plants in damp situations. Strawberry beds, 

 and rich soils in low meadows which support a rank vegetation, are their favorite 

 places of abode, where they may be seen hopping about with the nimbleness of fleas, 

 from early spring until late in autumn. They are mostly narrow-bodied insects, occa- 

 sionally compressed, but more rarely short and plump. Their wing-covers, when 

 developed, are commonly long and narrow, straight-veined, with a few areoles at tip. 

 The head is narrow, with the two basal joints of the antennae very wide, either one or 

 the other very long, and the terminal bristle extremely slender. But the most distinc- 

 tive character is seen at the apex of the posterior shanks, where the inner corner is 



