IV 
Introduction 
The species in this family are world-wide in distribution. Thirty-one of 
the species in the present catalogue have a distribution covering two or 
more zoogeographic regions and four are from unknown localities. The 
other species are recorded as follows: 118 from the Nearctic Region, 103 
from the Caribbean Region, 87 from the Neotropical Region, 231 from the 
Palearctic Region, 80 from the Ethiopian Region, 105 from the Oriental 
Region, 150 from the Malaysian Region, 29 from the Austromalayan Re¬ 
gion, 24 from the Australian Region, and 19 from the Oceanic Region. 
The known geographic distribution of each species is indicated by super¬ 
script figures at the end of the lines, which correspond to geographic regions 
designated by the same superscript figures. In general we have indicated 
the distribution as given by the author of the reference, using the country 
as the smallest unit except in the larger countries, where states and prov¬ 
inces are used as the smallest units. In the larger island groups the indi¬ 
vidual islands are indicated wherever possible, in view of the importance 
of island endemism. 
THE PURPOSES TO BE SERVED BY A CATALOGUE OF INSECTS 
A catalogue of animals should serve practically all fields of biology. It 
should be, therefore, as complete a listing of all the records of families, 
subfamilies, tribes, genera, species, and varieties as it is possible for the 
author to assemble. The nature of the reference is of the greatest impor¬ 
tance. A student of zoogeography should be able to find a complete list of 
the regions inhabited by the various species. The student of ecology should 
be able to find references to all that is known about the life history, food 
plants, and other pertinent data. The student of economic entomology 
should be able to check the histories of those species that are suspected of 
being injurious to plants. The plant disease specialist should be able to 
check the current nomenclature of the species which are disease vectors 
or suspected of being disease vectors. Those research workers studying 
morphology, physiology, or genetics should be able to trace the develop¬ 
ment in the field of their special interest. And lastly, the student of tax¬ 
onomy should be relieved of the burden of searching for, past recordings, 
and the journals which publish taxonomic papers should not have to pay 
the cost of publishing the past records and duplicating the synonymy that 
is already well known. Thus it would be necessary only to record synonymy 
which has been developed since the publication of the catalogue. Inci¬ 
dentally, we are pleased to note an increase in the use of the method of 
literature citations developed in Metcalf’s Bibliography of the Homoptera 
Auchenorhyncha. Thus Jones 1950a: 63 is a better method of citation than 
the present method: Jones, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (12) 5: 63. 
Unfortunately this method was not adopted in the earlier numbers of 
