CLASSIFICATION OF THE SPECIES. 25 
description of all their differential characters; it will be 
sufficient to indicate them generally, as displayed in 
the typical-species. 
Bees then have a long ateap-diaped tongue or 
proboscis ; the hind legs are flattened out and hairy, 
and the basal joint of the feet, that is to say the one 
nearest the body, is very much larger than any of 
the others. The fore-wings are marked in a way 
peculiar to bees, and are not folded in repose. The 
tribe of Sand-wasps in the same way have peculiar 
markings on their fore-wings, and do not fold them 
in repose. Their tibiee, that is to say the long bones 
next above the tarsi, are armed all down with strong 
spines, and are very much stouter in proportion than 
the corresponding limbs of the wasp. | 
The Wasp tribe are provided with stmgs: their 
tarsal joints, unlike those of bees, are of a regularly 
proportional size, and their tibiz, unlike those of 
sand-wasps, are long and slight, and armed with 
spines only at the distal extremity. The fore-wings 
are marked with undeviating regularity by certain 
nervures differmg in the several families, and when 
in repose are folded longitudinally. By this single 
character of the longitudinal folding of the wings 
the Eumenidee or solitary wasps, and the Vespidee or 
social wasps, are somewhat arbitrarily, as it might 
seem, and artificially, united into one family, hence 
called Diplopteryga. By this rule the Eumenide are 
separated from the Fossores or sand-wasps—which do 
not fold their wings—to which they seem much more 
naturally allied. The distinction, however, appears 
much less arbitrary in the Exotic than in the British 
Fauna. In our islands, indeed ,the transition from the 
