Most students of insect morphology consider that the male and female genitalia of insects are homologous, but it is also considered that in some groups of insects the female genital opening, or gonopore, is situated between the eighth and ninth abdominal sternites and the male gonopore between the ninth and tenth. So far as the Hemiptera are concerned these two views have never been reconciled, and the fact that the gonapophyses of the two sexes appear to pertain to different segments has been ignored, or used as an argument against the organs being homologous.