E. P. Van Duzee.
Mr. Crawford's Recent Work on Delphacinae.
Psyche 21(5):163-166, 1914.

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19141 Van Duzee-Mr. Crav'ford's Recent Work on the Delphacina 163 MR. CRAWFORD'S RECENT WORK ON THE
DELPHACINE
BY E. P. VAN DUZEE,
University of California, Berkeley, Cala. Mr. Crawford has given us a considerable contribution to our knowledge of the Delphacinse of America north of Mexico in which he has described one genus and twenty species as new to our fauna and in addition has given us a fair insight into the Delphacid fauna of Central and South America. There is a carefully pre- pared key to the genera, in part founded on characters not before used for this purpose. Chief among these is the use of the post- tibial spur. The author has disregarded the pronotal carinse in his classification of the genera, as a character difficult to appreciate, but uses those of the vertex and frons which are often still more obscure. In spite of all the objections that have been raised against the use of these pronotal carinse in the classification of this group it still seems to me that they form a character of prime importance in discriminating the genera. There certainly are very few species in which their form cannot readily be made out, much more easily in fact than the form of the tibial spurs, and it seems hardly likely that they would ever separate otherwise closely related species. His discarding of this and other equally useful characters has led to his lumping several readily separable genera: three under Dicranotropis and six under Megamelus. These will be referred to later. A hasty glance over the paper shows that three genera and over forty described species were unknown to him in nature out of a total of fifteen genera and about one hundred species recorded from north of Mexico, a relatively large number which leads one to fear there may be some duplication among his twenty new species. For one I cannot follow Kirkaldy, as Crawford has done, in giving the Delphacinse family rank. It seems much better to 'continue the divisions of the old family Fulgoridse as subfamilies, at least until some competent student has worked out the classi- 1A contribution toward a monograph of the Homopterous insects of the family Delpha- cidze of North and South America. From Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Val. 46, pp. 557-640, 1914.



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164 Psyche [October
fication of the Homoptera in the same masterly way in which the later Dr. Reuter has the Heteroptera. I add the following notes: Genus Stobaera Stal.
Crawford unites concinna, minuta and affinis with tricarinata but I am by no means convinced.
While closely related I still
believe them distinct as pointed out by me in my report on the Florida Hemiptera.
Genus Cochise Kirk.
In a letter from Mr. Muir he has suggested to me that Cochise apacheanus Kirk. is a synonym of Bostwa nasuta of Ball and I am inclined to think him right in this.
Kirkaldy writes his descrip-
tions in such a vague way it is impossible to form any mental picture of the object he is describing. For instance what does he mean when he says "lateral keels (of the pronotum) distant apically and basally, arising anteriorly at the inner margin of the eye, curving at an acute angle near the hind margin to meet the eye again"? If one tries to draw such a carina on a Delphacid prono- turn he finds himself wandering aimlessly about, with two entirely different sets of carinse as the final result. Probably the genus can only be located by a restudy of the type. Genus Achorotile Dahlb.
It is likely that this genus does not occur in America. The
specimens I formerly located as albosignata Dahlb., I now find to be the young of Megamelus notatvs Germ. Achorotile foveata Spooner is a redescription of my Stobcera 4-pustulata from Florida. Genus Jassideus Fieber.
In Macrotomella the lateral pronotal keels are distinct and run to the hind margin and the form of the head is entirely different, Stiroma I also believe to be sufficiently distinct. Both of these genera have the keels of the head continued over the apex while in Jassideus they are obsolete there, a character Crawford accepts in Kormus.
Genus Phyllodinus Van Duzee.
Mr. Crawford names Jamaica as the locality for my nitens. It
was from Florida and was described in my paper of 1909, not 1907.




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19141 Van Dwe-Mr. Crawford's Recent Work on the Delphacince 165 Genus LiburnieUa Crawford.
This is a good genus sufficiently distinct from Liburnia Stal. L. ormta Stal. is the only species known to me. Genus Stenocranus Fieber.
S. saccharivorus Westw. is a light green insect, not "yellowish- orange" as described by Crawford.
His specimens may have
been in spirits.
It was common about sugar cane in Jamaica and I took it at Tampa, Florida.
Stenocranus croceus Van Duzee.
This species is here wrongly
credited to Osborn and Ball, who merely listed the species but did not describe it.
Their paper was published in 1897, not 1896. This is a true Kelisia as described by me, and has the front dis- tinctly wider than in Stenocrantis with the sides arcuated. Stenocranus vittatus Stal is undoubtedly the same as my lautus and both are probably mere color varieties of dorsalis Fitch. -
Genus Dicranotropis Fieber.
The genera Peregrinus and Pissonotus are entirely distinct from Dicranotropis and may at once be distinguished by the characters of the pronotal carinse : In Perigrinus they run straight to the hind margin, while in Pissonotus they are more divergent and rarely attain the hind margin. In Dicranotropis these carinae follow the contour of the eye. The general aspect of Pissonotus is very distinct, approaching only Megamelus. Mr. Crawford sinks my basalis as a synonym of delicatus but it is absolutely dis- tinct. The Columbus, Texas, specimen which he examined was not typical of the species as I stated in my description. I do not think I labeled that specimen as a "type." If I did it was done inadvertent1 y.
Genus Megamelus Crawford
This genus as outlined in the work before us contains at least six undoubtedly valid genera: Megumelus, Kelisia and Prokelisia with the lateral pronotal keels running straight to the hind margin, and Euidella, Chloriona and Liburnia in which they curve outward behind the eyes. In his key the author divides his unwieldy genus into' these two sections and under each uses color characters first and ultimately structural features for locating the species. I have not tried to mil down any of the species by his key but it would,



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