Sept., I9I7-] CoCKERELL: COLLECTING BeES IN SOUTHERN TexAS. 189 



sents only a color variation. The argemones are easy flowers to col- 

 lect from, and with the aid of Jack Cowgill, aged 6, I secured a good 

 series of argemone-visiting bees. One day when I was away Jack 

 used lemon extract to kill his bees, showing that even in this special- 

 ized age necessity may be the mother of invention. 



The Oenotheras were typically slightly pink, veined with rosy, but 

 here and there a plant bore flowers of the same bright rosy color as 

 the veins of the ordinary form. I also found white flowers in the 

 fields with the rose-colored Oenothera. No bees were found visiting 

 these flowers. 



The typical blossom of the opuntia was bright yellow, but here 

 again there were most wonderful color varieties. The colors ranged 

 through primrose and buffy and orange with the combinations of 

 these colors with red, the darkest one was very lovely, a dull velvety, 

 buffy-rose. Words give little idea of these color variations. I have 

 seen nothing like the wonderful shades, though some of them are 

 suggested by some of the Auriculas. We 'took a good series of bees 

 from the opuntias, but none of them proved of especial interest. 



List of the Bees Collected.^ 

 Colletes intermixtus Swenk. 



San Benito, one male at flower of Kocbcrlinia spinosa. 



Halictus (Chloralictus) politissimus new species. 



5. Length about 5 mm., anterior wing 4 mm. ; rather robust, the head 

 broad and round, but not unusually large; head and thorax shining dark 

 green, abdomen and legs black ; mandibles obscurely reddish apically ; head 

 and thorax with short, sparse, dull white hair ; face and front shining, the 

 front finely and not very densely punctured, the punctures much smaller at 

 the sides than in the middle ; antennje dark, the flagellum obscurely brown 

 beneath toward end ; mesothorax convex, highly polished, with scattered, weak 

 punctures; scutellum polished; metapleura minutely cross-striate ; area of 

 metathorax with irregular longitudinal plicae on the basal half ; tegulse dark 

 reddish ; wings hyaline, strongly iridescent, stigma and nervures very pale 

 testaceous ; hind spur of hind tibia with three or four large blunt teeth ; 

 abdomen rather thinly pruinose-pubescent ; bases of segments with beautifully 

 plumose hairs ; no conspicuous punctures on abdomen. Tegulae not punctured. 



San Benito, Texas, at flowers of Argemone {IV. P. Cockcrell). 

 Not unlike H. crassiceps Ellis, but smaller, with much smaller head. 

 1 By T. D. A. Cockerell. 



