262 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
employed in the construction and provisioning of the nest of the 
working species, and which we may therefore expect to find in a less 
developed state than in those species which, from being parasitic, do 
not require their full development. Hence it is that we find the 
general structure of the parasite bee closely resembling that of the 
bee, at the expense of whose young its own are destined to be 
nourished; and hence, if we regard Bombus and Psithyrus of St. 
Fargeau, Aglae and Euglossa, Melecta and Anthophora, or Sphecodes 
and Halictus, with reference to their general structure, they will be 
found most intimately allied; whilst if, on the other hand, we regard 
such portion of their economy as is connected with the formation and 
provisioning of their nests, it will be requisite to place them in dif- 
ferent divisions. If we observe, however, the great variation existing 
amongst bees in this portion of their economy, it is evident that this 
cannot be regarded as a normal or typical character, and that a dis- 
tribution founded thereupon would necessarily be unnatural. The 
arguments which I have already employed in pages 86., 186., and 
238. upon this subject, in relation to the sand wasps and wasps, are of 
course equally applicable to this tribe of insects. 
I will therefore now shortly notice those arrangements which 
have been made by authors, and which are based upon structural 
variations. Réaumur, followed by De Geer and other early authors, 
separated the bees into two primary divisions, under the names of 
“ Abeille” and “ Pro-abeille.” To these, other generic groups were 
added by Scopoli and Fabricius, which Mr. Kirby, in his celebrated 
monograph upon the English bees, published in 1802, reduced again 
to two, under the names of Melitta and Apis; the characters forming 
the most striking distinction between them being furnished by the 
tongue, which organ in the first is short, flattish, usually acute, with a 
lateral auricle, and not inflected (jig. 90. 3, 4. 20.), and being in the 
latter (containing the true bees) elongate, slender, cylindrical, and 
folded backwards towards the breast (fig. 89. 7. and 92. 16.). In the 
same year, Latreille, in the memoirs appended to his Natural History 
of Ants, and in his Histoire Naturelle, &c., divided the bees into two 
families: 1. Andrenete (named after the extensive Fabrician genus 
Andrena, and corresponding with Mr. Kirby’s genus Melitta and 
Réaumur’s Pro-abeille); and 2. Apiariz (corresponding with Mr. 
Kirby’s Apis and Réaumur’s Abeille) : and Latreille’s names, altered 
by English entomologists in their terminations into the family names of 
