222 BRITISH BEES. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



The name of this genus comes from pa/epos, long, and 

 k-^jface, in allusion to the length of that portion of 

 the head, although this assumed discriminative charac- 

 teristic is scarcely suitable; this again constitutes 

 another of the many instances wherein it would have 

 been much preferable to have imposed a name without 

 any significancy than one which is not thoroughly ap- 

 plicable. It is, indeed, always dangerous to attach a 

 name to a new genus which has reference to some indi- 

 vidual peculiarity, for it may eventually exhibit itself as 

 limited to the one single species or sex to which it was 

 originally applied, as to every other subsequently dis- 

 covered species in the genus it may be inappropriate. 



Nothing, so far as I am aware, is known of the habits 

 of these singular insects, which, I believe, have been 

 caught only three times in this country and then only 

 the male sex. 



The first, which is in the collection of the British 

 Museum, was brought by Dr. Leach from Devonshire ; 

 the second was caught in the New Forest by the late 

 John Walton, Esq., distinguished for his knowledge of 

 the British Curculionidce, and who kindly presented it to 

 me for my collection when I was at the zenith of my 

 enthusiasm for the Hymenoptera, and with that collec- 

 tion it passed to Mr. Thomas Desvignes, in whose pos- 

 session it remains; and the third was caught by Mr. 

 Stevens, at Wey bridge, in Surrey. Why I enter so 

 particularly into these circumstances is, that the genus 

 is extremely peculiar both for scientific position and for 

 structure. In the latter the male is extremely like the 

 male of Saropoda and its female is more like the female 

 Scopulipedes among the Apida than one of the An- 



