4 
Psyche 
[March-June 
ATHYSANUS ARGENT ATUS FABR. IN 
NEW ENGLAND. (HOMOPTERA) 
By Nathan Banks 
Holliston, Mass. 
Soon after moving to Holliston over twenty years ago I found 
in my backyard (part of the abandoned “fox-hole” of a glacier) 
numerous specimens of a large leaf-hopper, and every year 
since I have taken specimens. It was not in the Hemiptera of 
Connecticut, nor in Osborn’s papers on the Maine and New 
York Jassidae. Six or eight years ago, being in Washington I 
spoke to Mr. Oman about it, and he thought it might be a species 
he had taken the year before near Mt. Washington. Specimens 
sent him he identified as a European species, Athysanus argen- 
tatus Fabr., the type of the genus. It occurs where the grass is 
dense and chiefly near the beginning of the swamp, not in 
pastures, orchards, or gardens where the economic entomologist 
would have taken it long ago. 
In a trip across Maine from the White Mountains to Bangor 
I found it in the Pinkham Notch, and at various places in 
Maine, rather abundant near the Belgrade Lakes. Mr. Moore 
of Quebec, has shown me a specimen from Peakes Island, 
Maine, and recently I have seen a few specimens from the 
Plymouth area of Massachusetts. 
It is a pale species, and when fresh the folded wings are 
silvery white as far each side as the first brown streak in the 
cells, except that the commissure, claval suture, and first^ claval 
vein are brown. There are three brown streaks through the 
cells and a short one in the fork of medius. The costa is con- 
vex, thickened and usually ivory-white. The wing is rather 
slender, no angle at end of claval suture, so that the brown of 
the commissure continues straight out and around tip to end 
of medius; the three apical cross-veins are near each other, 
there is no second cross-vein. On the head there is a curved 
black line from eye to eye, the vertex extending somewhat in 
front of it, more so in middle than elsewhere. The frons shows 
eight or nine transverse slightly curved lines of pale brown or 
