SOME EUROPEAN FOSSIL BEES. 313 
The orange, yellowish, or whitish suffusion at the base of the 
lunules, which is often brilliant in the type, disappears in these 
specimens altogether, the borders then reminding somewhat of 
the wing-borders in V. vo. 
(To be continued.) 
SOME EUROPEAN FOSSIL BEES. 
By TD Ay *CockeRenn. 
Wuen recently in Zurich I took the opportunity to make a 
critical examination of a number of fossil bees described by Heer 
from the Miocene of (iningen.* For every facility in this work 
I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Albert Heim, in whose 
custody the collections are. The splendid collection of fossil 
insects at the Zurich Polytechnicum would afford opportunity for 
many months of fruitful study, and it is much to be regretted 
that it has been, and is so greatly, neglected by entomologists. 
Lithurgus adamiticus (Heer). 
Apis adamitica, Heer, Foss. Hym. aus GEningen und Radoboj, 
p. 4, taf. III. fig. 11. Urwelt der Schweiz, f. 287. 
This was described, and has since been cited by authors, as 
a veritable Apis, closely related to the living honey-bee. An 
examination of the type shows that the resemblance to Apis 
is merely superficial, and, so far as can be seen, the insect 
essentially agrees with Lithurgus. The shape of the abdomen 
accords well with female Lithurgus: the abdomen is a little over 
8 mm. long, 4 broad, truncate basally, pointed apically, as pre- 
served warm red-brown with the first three sutures colourless ; 
Heer's figure of the first segment shows the Lithurgus-like form. 
The thorax is short, of the same colour as the abdomen ; the legs 
are not visible. The wings seem short for the size of the insect; 
the venation is only partly preserved. Marginal cell relatively 
short, pointed, the end symmetrical, not approaching apex of 
wing; all this exactly as in Lithurgus, and different from Apis, 
or even Megachile, the latter having the cell much more obtuse. 
Stigma slightly developed, as in Lithurgus, the part projecting 
over the marginal cell short, herein like L. atratiformis, Ckll.t 
Basal nervure hardly deflected at the junction of the two sections, 
and with the upper section relatively long; all this as in L. 
atratiformis, and contrasting with the European L. fuscipennis. 
* The fossil-beds, cited in all the literature as of Giningen, are actually 
on the hill above Wangen, and some distance from Giningen. My wife and I 
visited the place, and collected a series of fossils, but did not obtain any bees. 
+ Specimens from Tahiti compared. 
