XYLOCOPA TENUISCAPA. 273 



is preserved in the collection of the Rev. F. W. Hope. 

 X. latipes is likewise an eastern insect. "According 

 to Mr. Smeathman, these bees are very injurious to 

 wooden houses, the posts of which they bore and 

 perforate in various directions, so as to weaken them 

 very much ; the holes they make are half an inch 

 in diameter. Drury hazards the conjecture, that the 

 curiously dilated anterior tarsi, and the long hairs 

 with which they are furnished, appear to be useful to 

 the creature for containing the substance of which 

 these insects compose their nests. This, however, 

 is but mere conjecture, since it is the males only that 

 possess this curious construction, and this sex takes 

 no share in the construction or provisioning of the 

 nest in any species of bees with whose economy we 

 are hitherto acquainted."* 



Having given these details respecting foreign 

 species, most of them bearing some affinity to the 

 Bombinatrices, we now return to the kinds more 

 closely related to the Hive-Bee, which alone have 

 been subjected to an assured domestication. In 

 Europe we have two distinct species of domestic 

 honey-bees. Besides the one commonly cultivated 

 viz., the Apis mellifica^ which has extended itself 

 over the greater part of the European Continent, is 

 met with even in Barbary, and has now been natu- 

 ralized in the extensive wastes and prairies of North 

 America, the Apis Ligustica of Spinola, A. Ligu- 

 rienne of Latreille, (See PI. XXIV.,) is cultivated 

 with success in Italy, and is probably the same 

 * Drury's Illust., Westwood's ed., vol. ii. p. 98. 



