Specific Characters in the Bee Genus Colletes 7 
Mr. Robertson remarks, Histoire Naturelle des Fourmis, page 
423, may have priority over both the papers just mentioned; in 
fact there are indications which to my mind favor that view. 
Moreover, the name Melitta is now applied to another genus of 
bees the type of which may be selected from one of the original 
species. On the whole, then, it seems best to give the old and 
familiar name the benefit of the doubt, and thus avoid a radical 
overturning of long-established names. 
As to the identity of Latreille’s Colletes succinctus, asserted by 
Nylander in his Revisio Synoptica Apum Borealium not to be 
the Apis succincta of Linnaeus, and to which he applied the name 
Colletes balteatus, there seems to be some doubt, but there seems 
also to be no good reason why Latreille’s species should be re- 
ferred to balteatus rather than succinctus. As Rey. Morice says, 
“Nylander first proposed balteatus as a name for Latreille’s suc- 
cinctus, which he considered not to be the succinctus of Linné. 
But I can find nothing either in Latreille or Nylander to show 
what the insect really was which Latreille called succinctus. Sev- 
eral species seem to me to suit all that is said by either author 
quite as well as the present [balteatus|.” Colletes succinctus as 
identified by modern authors, and in all probability correctly, is 
a very common palaearctic species ranging from England and 
Scandinavia over the whole of Europe to Egypt, and could as 
easily have been the form Latreille had when he identified suc- 
cincta as any other species; moreover, his genus was based as 
much upon Apis succincta Linnaeus as upon the specimens at 
hand. These considerations have induced me to consider Colletes 
succinctus as the type species of the genus. 
Genus COLLETES Latreille, 1802. 
1802. Histoire Naturelle des Fourmis, etc., p. 423. 
1802. Histoire Naturelle générale et particuliére des Crustacés et des In- 
SOGtss. 111,, Ps. 32: 
Type.—Colletes succinctus (Linnaeus) Latreille. 
GENERIC CHARACTERS.—Tongue short, broad, deeply triangularly emar- 
ginate at apex; labial palpi short, 4-jointed, the joints similar; maxillary 
palpi 6-jointed, joint 1 hardly longer than 2 and 38, joints 2-5 scarcely 
longer than thick, 6 a little shorter than 1; stigma well-developed but not 
49 
