Ill 



JANUARY 3rd, 1907 



The twenty-fourth regular meeting was held in the Entomo- 

 logical Laboratory of the H. S. P. A. Experiment Station, Mr. 

 Giffard in the chair. 



Member elected : Mr. G. A. Jordan. 



NOTES AND EXHIBITION OF SPECIMENS. 



Dr. Perkins exhibited a number of aculeate Hymenoptera 

 from the Hawaiian Isles and Australia, and made remarks 

 thereon. 



(i) Prosopis. 



About a score of species of this genus and allied forms from 

 Australia were exhibited. Dr. Perkins emphasized the great 

 variety of habitus and structure of these Australian forms as 

 compared with the fifty or more distinct Hawaiian species he 

 had separated from Prosopis under the name of Nesoprosopis. 

 The latter were in general of very uniform and inconspicuous 

 appearance, and none of the Australian species at all resembled 

 them structurally. 



The brightly metallic Australian species, those with bright 

 yellow thoracic markings and red abdomen, and the conspicu- 

 ous forms, had no analogy with the Hawaiian series. Australia 

 also yielded the extraordinary black and yellow wasp-like genus 

 Hylaeoides, which not only exactly reproduced the appearance 

 of some Australian wasps, but even had the very remarkable 

 structure of the second ventral segment shown by some of these. 

 "Very similar to the metallic true Prosopis of Australia is 

 a series of metallic species which form a new genus of bees, 

 allied indeed to Prosopis, but with an acutely lanceolate tongue 

 and indicating a direct origin of a sharp-tongued bee from an 

 obtuse-tongued one. This genus is therefore of great interest 

 as it connects the two distinct series of bees — the Obtusilingues 

 and Acutilingues. 



Another extraordinary new genus allied to Prosopis is an 

 insect so like to some fossorial wasps that it would hardly be 

 recogTiized as a bee at all without careful examination, but 

 might be suspected of being an abnormal Pemphredonid or 

 Crabronid, the general form and incrassate head resembling 

 these wasps. It is, however, a true bee and not even a parasitic 



October, 1907. 



