Page:The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips.pdf/88

 the inserted host term—dating from the original publication. From Linnaeus to present students of the group, nearly everyone except the International Commission on Nomenclature has considered such names binomial and my present usage is in accord with practically all current practice among cynipid workers. Under date of October 16, 1923, the attention of the International Commission was directed to the impracticability of changing more than a hundred names affected by Opinion 50 in the relatively small family Cynipidae alone; but to date (six years later) we have only the formal acknowledgement of the communication by the Secretary of the Commission.

The species now accepted as true Cynips have been discovered as follows:

Nearly two-thirds of the varieties have been described since the beginning of the World War. There are almost as many varieties now known in this genus as Riley (in Bassett 1882:330) predicted in the American fauna of the entire family Cynipidae.

The great increase in known forms within the last twenty years would suggest that now we must have exhausted the ready opportunity to print “new species” after a Cynips; but to one acquainted with the number of unexplored faunas in the highly varied biologic areas of the United States, with our almost complete lack of knowledge of the Cynipidae of the two largest oak floras in the world—in Mexico and southeastern Asia, or even with the scant work done on the gall wasps of more northern and Mediterranean Europe, it may appear that we are only laying a foundation for extensive discoveries yet to be made in this very genus of insects. It is astounding that any one had a fair concept of species a