METHOD OF DETERMINING GENERA. 171 



of the troplii severally, we should be better able to de- 

 termine the legitimacy of applying them to the purpose 

 of indicating the natural generic character, but being 

 compelled, by reason of our ignorance of their several 

 special functions, to avail ourselves of their form, relative 

 proportions, and number only, uncertainty of having 

 caught the clue of nature's scheme must of necessity 

 attend this distribution. 



But as what we do know of their uses in this family 

 clearly indicates them to be an essential instrument 

 indispensable to the economy of the insect, and which 

 gives these organs an almost paramount importance, 

 their comparative construction in the several genera 

 would yield clear notions of the true order of succession, 

 were we acquainted with the relative significancy of the 

 various portions of the entire organ. Thus we see it 

 numerically most complete in what we are pleased to 

 suppose the least genuine bees the Andrenidee. 



In my series of the genera proposed in the preceding 

 section, with the Nudiped true bee Melecta commences 

 a deficiency of either some of the joints of the maxil- 

 lary palpi, or of the paraglossse ; throughout the artisan 

 bees this abridgment is conspicuous both in number 

 and proportion ; and it culminates in what we consider 

 the facile princeps, that most wonderfully organized 

 of all insects the genus Apis, which in its neuters has 

 neither paraglossse nor maxillary palpi, the latter being 

 equally deficient in the male or drone, and in the queen ; 

 and in both the male and the queen the paraglossse are 

 but rudimentary. 



Nature appears too mysterious in her operations to 

 permit us to solve these remarkable anomalies, for no 

 combination of the genera founded exclusively upon them 



