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II. lUiLstrations of the male terminal segments and arma- 

 tures in thirty -five species of the Hymeno^yterous 

 genus Colletes. By the Rev. FRANCIS D. Morice, 

 M.A., F.E.S. 



[Road December rird, 1903.] 



Plates VI, VII, VIII, and IX. 



It has long been known that the " avmures copulatrices " 

 of Colletes ^ $ yield remarkable specific characters. Mr. 

 Saunders's Synopsis (Trans. Ent. Soc, 1882) figured them 

 for the six British species then known, and in 1891 (Hor. 

 Soc. Ent. Ross., xxv) Radoszkowski published a " Revision," 

 with two Plates, representing in all about twenty 

 palsearctic species. 



It is so hard to find really satisfactory specific characters 

 in this genus, that Radoszkowski's work might have been 

 extremely useful if its execution had been somewhat more 

 careful. But even the best of his figures are far too slight 

 and diagrammatic to give an adequate idea of the very 

 complicated objects which they represent. Certain features 

 of these — not always the most characteristic — are empha- 

 sized and even exaggerated in his figures, but so many 

 others are ignored that the total impression conveyed to us 

 is often quite unlike that made by the objects themselves. 

 (The manner in which he deals with the lases of the sagittx 

 in these figures is particularly unsatisfactory — the two or 

 three hard lines on a flat field which are meant to suggest 

 their shape being never adequate for that purpose, and 

 sometimes really unintelligible.) Occasionally some 

 attempt is made in the text to explain the characters 

 which the author meant to indicate in his figures, but 

 these explanations often by no means suffice to clear up 

 doubts and difficulties produced by the lack of suggestive- 

 ness in the figures themselves. And it must be said 

 further that the " new species " brought forward in this 

 Revision are very poorly characterized, and that his 

 identifications are often questionable, and sometimes 

 certainly wrong. 



I am as convinced as Radoszkowski himself can have 



TRANS, ENT. SOC. LOND. 1904. — PART I. (APRIL) 



