72 [March, 1917. 



large size, a single drawer of his cabinet containing more examples than 

 the whole of Kirbv's collection. Also the specimens are in an excel- 

 lent state of preservation, and for the most part will not suffer by 

 comparison with examples freshly caught. They show clearly enough 

 that a well-preserved collection will hardly deteriorate at all in half or 

 three-quarters of a century. I first saw Smith's collection at the 

 Entomological Exhibition held at the old Westminster Aquarium in 

 1879, and I imagine that very few specimens had ever been moved for 

 any purpose since that time, until I began my examination of the 

 species. 



A few specimens, to which I shall refer, were sent to Edward 

 Saunders for examination, at the time when he was writing his 

 "Hymenoptera Aculeata," and by the side of these there are generally 

 labels in his handwriting. Smith did not regularly ticket his speci- 

 mens with locality labels or dates, but only in special cases. Perhaps 

 he felt fairly sure of his identifications, and that the localities given 

 in his British Museum publications were therefore suflicient. But 

 the many wrongly named examples in the collection show how necessary 

 locality labels really are, for it may be that those wrongly named 

 are the very ones on which a species is credited to a certain locality. 

 The earliest date I can remember to have noticed on Smith's labels is 

 1837, the latest 1876, so that roughly speaking, the collection repre- 

 sents the work of 40 years, though no doubt a good deal of collecting 

 was done before the first date. 



It will be convenient to deal with the bees first, on account of my 

 recent paper on the Kirby collection. The three commoner species of 

 Golletes do not call for much remark, though there are wrongly-na led 

 individuals present in each case. C. picidigma Thoms. was not recog- 

 nised by Smith, but his speinmens named fodiens, from Barmouth, 

 belong to it. G. marginata Smith was originally described on speci- 

 mens captured by Samuel Stevens, at Littlehampton. These, in 

 beautiful condition, are still in Smith's collection ; and on one, dated 

 1845, is a label stating that it had been compared with the Linnaean 

 example, so named in M.S. Whether this really was the same species 

 as the Linnaean is of little consequence, but it may be said that 

 Smith, in his 2nd edition, states that in 1875, he himself found the 

 species in plenty at the original locality on the flowers of yarrow. 

 His Littlehampton specimens, however, are all fodiens in fine con- 

 dition, and quite unlike marginata ! He has none from the northern 



