PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 127 
might be sent to me for examination. They were trans- 
mitted to me in avery dry state, and a careful imspection 
with a lens afforded no indication of vegetable growth. I 
then broke up a specimen and examined the portions with a 
compound microscope, using a Nachet No. 4. The head and 
thorax were clean, but on a portion of the sternum were 
innumerable very minute linear slightly curved bodies, 
which, when immersed in water, showed the well-known 
oscillating or swarming motion. Notwithstanding the agree- 
ment of these minute bodies with the characters of the 
genus Bacterium of the Vibrionia, I regarded them as sper- 
matia, having frequently seen others indistinguishable from 
them under circumstances inconsistent with the presence of 
conferve, as in the immature peridia and sporangia of 
Fungi. In the specimen first examined were no other indi- 
cations of the growth of any parasite ; but from the interior 
of the abdomen of another bee I obtained an abundance of 
well-defined globular bodies resembling the spores of a 
fungus, ‘00012—00016 inch in diameter. Three out of four 
specimens subsequently examined, contained within the 
abdomen similar spores. No traces of mycelium were visi- 
ble; the plants apparently had come to maturity and 
withered, leaving only the spores. The chief question then 
remaining to be solved was, as to the time when the spores 
were developed, whether before or after the death of the 
bees. In order, if possible, to determine this, I placed four 
of the dead bees im circumstances fayorable for the ger- 
mination of the spores, and in about ten days I submitted 
them again to examination. They were covered with mould 
consisting chiefly of a species of mucor, and one also of 
Botrytis or Botryosporium. These fungi were clearly extra- 
neous, covering indifferently all parts of the imsects, and 
spreading on the wood on which they were lymg. On the 
abdomen of all the specimens, and on the clypeus of one of 
them grew a fungus, wholly unlike the surrounding mould. 
It was white and very short, and apparently consisted wholly 
of spores arranged in a moniliform manner like the filaments 
of a Penicilium. These spores resembled those first found in 
the abdomen of the bees, and did, I think, proceed from 
them. The filaments were most numerous at the junction of 
the segments of the abdomen. The spores did not resemble 
the globules in Sporendonema musce. The Rey. M. T. 
Berkeley, to whom I sent some of the bees, found, by 
scraping the interior of the abdomen with a lancet, very 
minute curved linear bodies, which he compared to vibrios. 
He found mixed with them globular bodies, but no visible 
VOL. II. M 
