106 REVIEWS. 



Kirby, at that time, as indigenous, while Smith's Catalogue embraces two 

 hundred and six only. The actual additions among these, however, 

 amount to seventy ; four, treated by Kirby as mere varieties, have had 

 their right acknowledged to specific distinction ; and three out of his list 

 are excluded as of exotic origin.* The resulting disparity is to be explained 

 by more extended observation having eliminated many supposed species as 

 mere differences of sex, and by the reduction to their proper specific type 

 of many of the varieties which are apt to arise from the wearing away and 

 bleaching of the pubescence through age or accident. Let us take for an 

 example the group of bees to which Kirby's remarks above quoted 

 directly applied. Under the first of these, Bombus muscorum, Mr. Smith 

 remarks 



" Having included seven of the species of our great monographer in that of 

 JB. muscorum, I must observe that it has not been done without having repeatedly 

 examined the communities of a large number of nests ; in some, all the varieties 

 described were found ; in different nests, one or other of the varieties will usually 

 be the most numerous ; in nests found in the north of England, the variety B. 

 agrorum is much more numerous than in the west. This species is found in all 

 parts of the United Kingdom, and is undoubtedly the true A. muscorum of Lin- 

 naeus : the typical specimen preserved in the cabinet at the Linnean Society is a 

 female." 



The specific marks to which Audovin first directed attention have been 

 employed by Mr. Smith to fix the species of this difficult genus found in 

 Britain. The result has been that while four species, unknown to Kirby, 

 have been added since, his original list has been reduced from thirty 

 species to fourteen, retained in the pages of Smith. Of the parasitic 

 genus Ccelioxys, on the other hand, of which Kirby actually knew but one 

 species (for his C. inermis would seem to be but a male variety of the first), 

 four more have been since discovered in Britain. 



Kirby, as various notices in the Monographia show, had not neglected 

 to consult the authentic specimens of Linnaeus, which had become the 

 property of his accomplished friend, Sir J. E. Smith, not very long before ; 

 but he did not deem it necessary to follow out the consequences so 

 rigidly as later authors have done ; and many of those notes remained 

 forgotten or unregarded, until Mr. Smith resuscitated, and enlarged them, 

 by a fresh collation of the Linnean types, which has led to the restora- 

 tion or corrected application of several of his trivial names. Thus the 

 Sphex gibba of Linna3us, appropriated by Scopoli (whom most later authors 

 have implicitly followed in this) to a genuine Linnean Sphex, now Pompilus, 

 is properly recognised as a bee Sphecodes gibbus. And while Apis retusa 



* Apit violacea, A. fiollinaria, A. druriella. 



