260 BRITISH BEES. 



second recurrent nervure also about the centre; legs 

 short, stout, the tibiae, slightly spinulose externally ; claws 

 very small, short, robust and simple. ABDOMEN obtusely 

 conical, truncated at the base, its terminal segment tri- 

 angular, and the lateral margins slightly reflected. 



The MALE scarcely differs, excepting in the usual male 

 characteristics, and that the apical segment of the ab- 

 domen is rounded and margined. 



NATIVE SPECIES. 



1. variegatus, Linnaeus, $ ? . 3-4 lines. (Plate XL 



fig. 2 c? ? ) 

 variegatus, Kirby. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



It is difficult to assign a reason for the name of this 

 genus, or to trace an applicable derivation from eV/aXo?, 

 for the insect in no way suits, either directly or by anti- 

 phrase, any of the significations of this word. It is one 

 of the prettiest of our little bees, and is parasitical upon 

 the Collates Daviesiana,a.uA it may be found in abundance 

 wherever the metropolis of this species occurs. There 

 is one special locality near Bexley, in Kent, a vertical 

 sandbank within a few hundred yards of the village, 

 where I have always found it in the spring months, and 

 have there taken it as numerously as I wished. I have 

 already alluded, in another part of this work, to the 

 uniformly greater beauty of the parasitical bees, to those 

 which they infest, and their exceedingly different appear- 

 ance in every case excepting in that of the genus Apa- 

 thus. We might have expected that they would have 

 been disguised like these, the better to carry on their 

 nefarious practices, but what can well be more dissimilar 

 than Epeolus and Colletes, or than Nomada and all its 



