THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 413 



Trigona carbonaria Sm. freely visits them, collecting pollen. No 

 species of Trigona occurs within the natural range of the 

 H. annuus group. 



At Gisborne, New Zealand, Mr. W. D. Cook kindly observed 

 the insects on H. annuus coronatus in 1913-14. He did not send 

 any specimens, but his account is sufficiently clear to permit the 

 recognition of the bees, and I have inserted the names within 

 brackets : — 



"There seem to have been very few bees about this year; at 

 any rate very few visited the sunflowers. I noticed a few ordinary 

 German bees [Apis mellifera L.], a few bumble-bees, and a 

 tremendous number of the common cream-coloured moth, and also 

 a great many flies. [The bees] were nearly all a small black 

 bumble-bee. There seem to be very few big bumble-bees about 

 here (I mean the black one with the yellow band [Bombus 

 terrestris L.]), but the one I saw most was about half the size and 

 pure black (much larger than an ordinary bee)" [Bombus ruderatus 

 fidens Harris.] 



Thus in New Zealand the only bee-visitors were the introduced 

 species of Bombus and Apis, as might be expected from the absence 

 of native long-tongued bees. Had the sunflower reached that 

 country before the bees, perhaps the flies would have been fairly 

 satisfactory pollinators. 



I add to this paper descriptive notes on some sunflower bees, 

 two of which are new. 



Melissodes semiagilis (Cockerell). 



Melissodes agilis semiagilis Cockerell, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 April 1906, p. 364, d". 



9. Length about 11 mm.; pubescence grayish-white, tinged 

 with ochreous, vertex with black hairs, scutellum and posterior 

 part of mesothorax with much black hair, the tegulae separated 

 from the black patch by a band of pale hair about equal to their 

 width; head broad; flagellum dusky reddish beneath, except at 

 base; first abdominal segment with a narrow pallid hind margin, 

 the others with hind margin dark; second segment with pale hair at 

 extreme base, and a rather broad median hair band ; third segment 

 with median band twice as broad as that on second; tibia of hind 



