LIBRARY

318
COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
tubes attached to the branches within which they live surrounded by froth.
Machcerota guttigera Westwood of Ceylon and members of the genera Pectinariaphyes
Kirkaldy, and Polychcetophyes Kirkaldy, infesting eucalyptus in
Australia, are representatives. Others occur in Africa. The sugar-cane froghopper,
Tamaspis saccharina Distant, causes froghopper blight of sugar cane
in Trinidad.
Family CICADELLIDlE 1 (Latreille 1802) (Ci'ca-dell'i-dre, from cicadella, diminutive
of the Latin cicada, a cicada or tree cricket; literally a small cicada).
Leafhoppers, Sharpshooters.
The members of this large family are small, slender insects with minute,
bristle-like antennre inserted in front of and between the eyes; usually with
two ocelli; the hind tibire with a double row of spines, the chief distinguishing
characteristic of the family. The front wings are somewhat thickened and often
brightly colored to match the head and prothorax. As the common names imply,
they are active jumpers although the adults also fiy freely. Both young and
adults have the characteristic habit of running sidewise. All are plant feeders
and pierce and suck out the juices, causing a drying-up and wilting of the tissues.
In addition, many species are carriers of plant diseases such as hopperburn,
tipburn, curly leaf, blight, mosaic, and other bacterial and fungous diseases,
and cause great losses to certain agricultural crops.
The winter is usually passed in the egg stage, although adults in many species
and nymphs in a few species hibernate in grasses, weeds, or trash. The small,
whitish, elongate, slightly curved eggs are inserted in tender Or hard plant tissues
in the fall and spring, and the wingless nymphs after four or five molts grow
to maturity in 18 to 50 days so that from one to six broods may appear before
the next winter. Of the large number of known species the great majority feed
upon wild grasses, weeds, flowers, shrubs, and trees. A number of native species
has also gone over to cultivated plants. They are now serious pests while a few
are introduced Old World species of well-known destructive habits.
The group which formerly constituted this family is now divided into at least
16 distinct families by some modern authors. The whole group is a very large
one and consists of hundreds of genera and thousands of species distributed
throughout the entire world. The members of the family as now defined have
the ocelli dorsally placed.
The most important North American genera are CicadeUa Latr., Drceculace-
1 There has been a noticeable lack of uniformity in the name of this family. The important
family names have evolved as follows: CICADELLlE Latreille 1802; CICADELLINA Burmeister
1835; CICADELLIDlELatr. 1850; TETTlGONIT IE Spinola 1850; TETTIGONIDlE
Uhler 1876; JASSIDES Amyot and Serville 1843; JASSINA St