114 THE FLORIST AND 
joints. Now, bj his own characters, the latter belongs to Heteromera, 
being Diaperis hydni of Fabricius. Yet Dr. Emmons, in spite of the five- 
jointed tarsus, has made it a " Chrysomela" without a specific name ; for 
not knowing the genus or family, he of course did not know where to look 
for it. PI. 28, fig. 4, is marked " undescribed" ! Of course. He makes no 
allusion to the insect in text, nor does he deign to indicate the genus, or 
tell us why he thinks it undescribed. We would not be so rash as to 
attempt to determine an insect from a figure in this mass of soiled paper. 
But we would ask the Doctor, and his abettors, whether they knoAV 
Anthrax simson, Fabr., or A. scripta, Say. Jour. Acad. Nat. Sc. III., 
p. 42, or ever saw the fig. Vol. I., pi. 3, fig. 2, of Wiedemann's Ausser 
Europaische Zweiflliglige Insecten ? 
Dr. Emmons states, p. 65, the Dynastidse belong to " tropical regions," 
and that their color is of a rich chestnut brown ; yet Westwood, on the 
next page to that consulted by Dr. Emmons, quotes Say for Bynastes 
tityus, (a green species,) found near Philadelphia; we have already seen 
him making the green Euchlora brown. On the same page he refers the 
common "horn beetle" to the Melolonthidse, and refers to the Glathyridse as 
"all foreign to us;" of course, for no one would suspect that Dr. Emmons 
ever heard of the North American genus Lichnanthe, or consulted the 
Journal of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences, Vol. V., pi. 13, fig. 3. 
Ignorance, without presumption, is excusable ; and we could therefore 
have excused the Doctor, if he had said nothing on these families ; but he 
had no right, for example, recklessly to assert the non-existence of Byrr- 
hidge in New York, when his knowledge of the fact was Zero. 
On p. 73, he says, the "May-beetles," plate 10, fig. 9, are known in the 
country by the name of Horn-bugs. Not quite ; Lucanus, plate 12, fig. 7, 
is a " Horn-bug," and he admits it as a Horn-beetle on page 269. But on 
page 265, Cerambyx is called a " Horn-bug," — a fine example of the result 
which arises from the use of vernacular names, which, so far from being 
useful, have ever deceived their advocate, Dr. Emmons. 
Thus, we commonly apply the name Wasp to Polistes, not to Vespa, 
which really belongs to the Hornets ; and the unlearned Doctor has thus 
put a paper-nest Wasp among what we call Hornets, apparently thinking 
that Say was wrong in the genus of his JSumenes fraterna, which is neither 
a Wasp nor a Hornet. The result is, that he has united the generic name 
of Vespa (Hornet) to the specific nz.me, fraterna, of a Eumenes, and applied 
them to a Polistes ; thus confounding three genera in one species. 
