1939] History of Entomology in China 25 
2. The Insect Singers — “Chu Ki” is Lycorma not Huechys. 
Although this book was published in 1929, I had not seen 
it until recently when I came to work on the cicadas I 
brought from China. Dr. Myers, the author, has given us a 
handy and readable book on the natural history of these 
insects. What interests me particularly are those occasions 
where he speaks on cicadas in China. Here it gives me the 
impression that, being unable to get at the original sources 
and consequently relying on what others have to say, Dr. 
Myers, in some cases, unfortunately subscribed as an inno- 
cent victim to those mistakes committed by others. 
For instance on page 3 he states, “the mention of cicadas 
apparently does not occur until the authoritative edition, 
the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, of A.D. 1578.” The author gives 
one the impression that the cicadas were not mentioned 
until 1578 while what he really means, if I interpret cor- 
rectly, is that they were not mentioned in the Pen Ts’ao. In 
either case, however, if one is able to read Chinese he will 
find that this is not correct. He will discover, for instance, 
many references to these insects both in the Li Chi or Book 
of Rites and the Shih Ching or Book of Odes as these two 
Classics are respectively known in English. This would 
mean that the earliest mention occurs at least not later than 
500 B.C. because these two Classics were connected in one 
way or another with Confucius (551-479 B.C.). In short, 
Dr. Myers has been entirely deceived by the Japanese 
version. 
On page 23, Dr. Myers writes: “the cicada itself was 
labelled Tchen, while the nymph — the tettiometra or cicada 
mother, of the Greek — Tchen touy, i.e. the cicada with a 
skin which falls like that of a serpent.” Here we have an- 
other mistake that can easily be rectified if one knows 
Chinese. Tchen touy is the shed skin. How it came to be 
interpreted as “nymph” is abstruse because “touy” means 
shed and the shed skin of cicada is the form generally men- 
tioned as a drug in the Chinese pharmacopoeia. 
That Chu ki is a Lycorma (L. delicatula White) , a fulgorid 
common in north China, not Huechys sanguinea De Geer, 
has never been suspected ever since the day when Amyot 
created the genus Huechys in 1836. It was fully accepted 
