50 THE BEES WITH POINTED TONGUES 



hillocks of sand, and seemed alive with. bees. 

 It was showery weather, and occasionally the 

 hillocks were washed nearly flat and a lot of sand 

 must have entered their burrows however, as 

 soon as the sun came out again they cleaned 

 out their holes and returned to their work. 

 Panurgus is most businesslike in its pollen collect- 

 ing ; it flies in a rapid headlong way into a flower, 

 and seems to do its best to bury itself, with a 

 remarkable amount of action as if it was in a 

 great hurry, and often bustles out of it again 

 almost immediately and goes on to the next. 

 Its methods suggest that it does more work in 

 five minutes than any other bee would do in ten. 

 Another genus, Anthidium (pi. C, 27), this time 

 one of the long-tongued bees, is peculiar in having 

 the male larger than the female. Both sexes 

 are black, variegated with yellow markings and 

 spots, but the male is more ornate in this respect 

 than the female and also has a peculiarly shaped 

 body, which is unusually flat, curving down- 

 wards towards the apex, which is armed with five 

 teeth, two bent ones on the sixth segment and 

 three on the seventh. The female collects pollen 

 on the underside of its body and collects the 



