68 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Feb., ’14 
corded that Triepeolus donatus is an inquiline of Entechnia 
taurea. Lovell states that this bee visits the Compositae ex- 
clusively. Of ten local species of Triepeolus, including T. 
donatus and excluding one of only one visit, none are exclu- 
sive visitors of Compositae. 
Lovell is correct in saying that in my view a bee is oligotrop- 
ic everywhere or nowhere. The whole matter is an inference 
from the fact that a bee has been observed collecting pollen 
on a certain flower and has not been found doing so on any 
other. The force of the latter statement depends upon the 
presumption that the observer would know whether a bee 
collects pollen from another flower or not. In 1899 I suggested 
fifty-three bees as oligotropic. I had observed 3670 visits 
of 194 nest-making bees to about 400 different kinds of flow- 
ers, so there was some basis for the presumption that if the 
bee were not oligotropic I would know it. Nevertheless, from 
my own observations I have found it necessary to modify six 
cases and reject four. Lovell quotes my statement: “When 
the flowers upon which a bee depends becomes extinct or rare, 
the bee may disappear or be forced to resort to flowers which 
originally it did not visit.” This may be true as a general 
statement, but I have never used it to support untenable cases. 
The statement of Miller quoted from the Fertilisation of 
Flowers (not “Plants”), p. 570, has already been commented 
on in the Bot. Gaz. 32: 367, 1901. It only shows that Miiller 
did not understand the flower-visiting habits of bees. 
I do not accept the opinion: ‘Therefore the entomophilous 
flora of a region, as a whole, is not better pollinated because 
a part of the bees are oligotropic than it would be if they were 
all polytropic.” 
Lovell says: “The fact that so many bees are oligotropic 
to the Compositae would seem alone to refute the theory that 
this habit is an effort on their part to avoid competition by 
visiting different plant families.” Observing that Lovell can 
fot cite a passage where anyone has propounded such a theory, 
let us consider the Compositae oligotropes. In the Can. Ent. 
42: 327, I have stated that of twenty exclusive both in their 
pollen and nectar visits the majority are oligotropes of Com- 
