240 INSECTS. 



Bee. There are several bees parasitic on Megachile, 

 Coelioxys being tbe most frequently so. 



The male in some species is easily recognised by the 

 conspicuously dilated, fringed fore-legs, which appear 

 like a mass of down ; in some the last joint of the an- 

 tennaB is flattened and widened ; others are without these 

 characteristics. The Leaf-cutting Bee described as lining 

 its cells with the petals of the scarlet poppy, is not an 

 English species. 



Anthidium somewhat resembles Megachile in appear- 

 ance; it forms cells in holes or tubes (not, as Mr. Smith 

 believes, making these burrows, but using such as she 

 finds ready), which she lines with down collected from 

 the woolly leaves of certain plants. Mr. Kirby found 

 such a nest in the keyhole of a door. 



In this genus there is only one English species, 

 A.manicatum, in which the male is larger than the female. 

 It is a handsome black Bee, with yellow markings on 

 the face, jaws, legs, &c., and a row of oval yellowish 

 spots down the sides of the abdomen. The female is 

 between one-third and half an inch, the male sometimes 

 as much as two-thirds, an unusual circumstance among 

 Bees, of which the female is nearly always the largest. 

 Chelostoma, the fourth genus of the Dasygastrse, 

 contains only two species, the 

 males of which are at once to 

 be recognised by the curved 

 abdomen, which is bent, or, 

 it might almost be said, which 

 is curled under them. Che- 

 Profile of Chelostoma florisomnis. lostomaflorisomnis, the largest 

 of the two species, being about 

 one-third of an inch in length, is very commonly 



