Holmesdale Natural History Chtb. 49 



He also exhibited a specimen of Caltlia radicans, from a plant grown by 

 him at Croydon, descended from the plant found by Don in Forfarshire in 

 1798, the only instance known of the occurrence of the species in the 

 British Isles ; the only existing station in Europe for this species is Gothland. 



The Secretary read a paper by Mr. Sydney Webb, entitled " The 

 Nomenclature and Arrangement of British Lepidoptera, with a few 

 suggestions thereon." 



Mr. Herbert Crosfield read a paper written by Mr. Edward Saunders on 

 *' The Pollen-collecting Bees of Great Britain," as follows : — • 



I have been asked to write a short paper to be read at the next meeting 

 of your Club, and as I have lately been specially occupied in the study of 

 the pollen-collecting Hymenoptera or bees of this country, I thought a few 

 remarks on some of their peculiarities, and especially on one of their chief 

 peculiarities which has hitherto received very little attention — viz., the hairs 

 on which they collect their pollen— might be interesting to your members. 

 Although nearly every one knows a hive-bee when he sees one, vet there 

 are many other kinds of bees in England, known by the general name of 

 wild bees, which "are not so well known, and therefore it will perhaps be 

 well first to define what I mean by a bee, that we may know what sort of 

 creatures we are going to think about. The older entomologists used to 

 divide the kingdom of insects into two gi-eat divisions by the form of the 

 mouth, distinguishing those that have lateral jaws or mandibles, which 

 they called the Mandibulata, from those which have simply a ductorial 

 mouth, which they called the Haustellata. Dealing with the perfect insect 

 or imago, this division is admirable, and for our purpose to-night will be 

 amply sufiicient. The whole of the tribe of bees are armed with mandibles, and 

 therefore belong to the former of these sections, and in the same section with 

 them we find the beetles, the dragonflies (including the Ephemera an,d 

 allied groups), and the grasshoppers (including the cockroaches, earwigs, 

 &c.) . "We have now to distinguish our bees from these three allied orders. 

 Prom the beetles and grasshoppers they may be readily known by their 

 four clear membranous wings. From the dragonflies, &c., which have also 

 four clear wings, they may be known by the neuration of these organs. In 

 the dragonflies the nervures of the wings are so numerous and close together 

 that they form a sort -of network, whereas in the bees they branch and form 

 the boundaries of a certain number of tolerably large cells, which vary much 

 in size and position. I think therefore we may take it for granted that if we 

 have found an insect with a mandibulata mouth, and four clear wings with 

 branching nerviires, that insect belongs to the order Hymenoptera. There 

 are exceptions to this rule, but these exceptions are few, and the rule is 

 useful and good enough for general purposes. The Hymenoptera again are 

 divided into several sections, but the true bees, or pollen-collectors, may be 

 known from all the others by having branched or plumose hairs on their 

 bodies. Nearly all the Melliferse, as they are called, collect pollen, but 



