7 
PLATE II. 
DESCRIPTIONS OF VARIOUS SPECIES OF THE HETEROPTEROUS GENUS 
PHYLLOMORPHA. 
W hen Sparrman first published his account * of the Cimex 
paradoxus, a lively degree of interest was excited by his description 
of the singular creature, which at once found its way into all the 
popular treatises upon natural history. His paper (Swedish 
Transactions, 1777) was illustrated by three figures of the insect 
of the natural size (one seen from above, copied in my plate 2, fig. 
1*, and the other two profiles). He likewise mentions, that the 
insect was captured at a considerable distance (“250 timars 
reise ”) from Cape Town. About ten years afterwards Stoll figured 
an insect from the Cape of Good Hope, which, judging from its 
natural size, and the nearly equal size of the fourth and fifth lobes 
of the abdomen, is evidently identical with Sparrman s. As other 
species were discovered, they were, however, referred at once to the 
Cimex paradoxus. Thus Wolff, Duraeril, and Duncan (Introd. to 
Ent. in Nat. Library pi. 20, fig. 1), have figured a European species 
under that name; whilst, still more recently, a smaller species, 
brought by M. Verreaux from the Cape of Good Hope, has been 
described under the same name. As I possess a specimen of the 
latter insect, from M. Verreaux, and as there is a specimen of 
Sparrman’s insect in the British Museum, and which agrees in size 
&c. with Sparrman's figures, I am happy in being enabled to exhibit 
the differences between the two South African species. 
Phyllomorpha, Lap . (Syromastes p. Latr .) 
Section I.—Prothorax with its posterior margin not produced into two long lobes, nor pro¬ 
longed over the base of the Hemelytra. 
Species I.— Pk. paradoza, Plate 2, fig. 1 and 1*. Lutea, fusco et sanguineo varia, pro- 
thoracis laciniis antice porrectis abdominis laciniis 4 et 5 fere sequalibus, his ad apicera 
vix emarginatis. Long. corp. lin. 5^, 
* Sparrman relates that when at the Cape, he observed this insect at noontide as he sought 
for shelter among the branches of a shrub trom the intolerable heat of the sun. Though the 
air was extremely still and calm, so as hardly to have shaken an aspen leaf, yet he thought lie 
saw a little withered, pale, crumpled leaf, eaten as it were by caterpillars, fluttering from the 
tree. This appeared to him so very extraordinary, that he thought it worth his while sud¬ 
denly to quit his verdant bower in order to contemplate it ; and he could scarcely believe his 
eyes when he saw a live insect, in shape and colour resembling the fragment of a withered leaf, 
with the edges turned up, and eaten away as it were by caterpillars, and at the same time beset 
all over with prickles creeping on the ground. 
