THE BEES WITH POINTED TONGUES 49 



Andrena. Dasypoda, so called on account of the 

 enormously long hairs of the pollen brushes of 

 the legs in the female, is one of our most beautiful 

 bees ; it is of moderate size, a little more than 

 half an inch long, with a brown haired thorax, 

 and a black body with white apical bands on 

 the segments ; the hind legs are rather unusually 

 long and the brush is composed of very long 

 bright fulvous hairs, and when the bee returns 

 home laden with pollen it is, as F. Smith says, 

 " sufficiently singular to attract the attention of 

 the most apathetic observer." It burrows in sandy 

 places much after the fashion of Andrena, etc- 

 The male is a different looking insect, entirely 

 covered with yellowish hairs. Panurgus (pi. B, 17) 

 is a curious genus of coal-black bees, whose females 

 have bright yellow pollen brushes on their hind 

 legs ; they visit yellow composite flowers and the 

 males often sleep curled up amongst their rays ; 

 they are most active bees, and burrow generally in 

 hard pathways. I was watching a large colony 

 of one of the species near Chobham in the end of 

 June they were burrowing in a gravel path, 

 under which the soil was of a black sandy nature; 

 the path was scattered all over with little black 

 B.W.A. E 



