10 WHEELER— THE PARASITIC ACULEATA. 



Darwinian period. Latreille, in a short paper, published in 1802 

 at the end of his remarkable volume on the habits of ants, and 

 Kirby in the same year were the first to construct noteworthy classi- 

 fications of bees. There was a remarkable agreement in their 

 point of view, both dividing the family into short-tongued and long- 

 tongued forms, subsequently called Andrenida; and Apidse, the 

 Andrenatse and Apiaires of Latreille and the supergenera Mclitta 

 and Apis of Kirby. The parasitic bees that were known in his day 

 were intercalated by Latreille among the Apiaires in close proximity 

 to their host genera. Lepeletier de St. Fargeau (1825) divided the 

 bees into two groups, the " recoltantes," or collecting, and the "para- 

 sites," and subdivided the former according to the dififerences in 

 their pollen-collecting apparatus. The views of Latreille and Lepe- 

 letier have dominated the classification of bees down to the present 

 time. Certain German melittologists, notably Schmiedeknecht and 

 Friese, have followed Lepeletier's scheme, whereas Westwood 

 (1840) and most subsequent workers have agreed with Latreille. 

 As Westwood's reasons are still interesting and include a good 

 statement of the pre-Darwinian or special creation conception of 

 the relations of the parasite to the host, I quote some of his re- 

 marks : 



" Indeed it is to be observed that the variation in the structure of the 

 species, thus varjang in their habits, does not seem to warrant the establish- 

 ment of them into separate famihes. This circumstance appears naturally 

 dependent upon tw^o considerations: ist, it is essential that the parasite in its 

 perfect state should possess a certain resemblance to the animal in the nest 

 of which it deposits its eggs, so as to deceive the latter and its associates 

 (Kirby in a footnote here calls attention to the resemblance of the Dipteron 

 VoluccUa to Bombus) ; and 2d, the nature of the food of both being similar, 

 the variation in structure is much less striking than if the parasite were car- 

 nivorous, as the Ichneumonidae, and the animal attacked (as the caterpillars 

 of Lepidoptera, etc.) herbivorous. The parasitic connection indeed goes no 

 further than this, viz., that the larva of the parasite eats up the food of its 

 fosterer, and so starves it to death ; the larvae of both are therefore pol- 

 lenivorous, and the dififerences which will naturally be most striking, will con- 

 sequently be found in those organs which are emploj'ed in the construction 

 and provisioning of the nest of the working species, and which one may 

 therefore expect to find in a less developed state than in those species wiiich, 

 from being parasitic, do not require their full development. Hence it is 

 that we find the general structure of the parasitic bee closely resembling 

 that of the bee, at the expense of whose young its own are destined to be 



