Specific Characters in the Bee Genus Colletes 33 
Type Locatity.—Willis, Montgomery county, Texas; types in 
collection of the author. 
A series of thirty-one specimens collected in the type locality 
by Mr. J. C. Bridwell, March 12 to 16, 1903, mostly on plum blos- 
soms, all have the pubescence as above described, and on first 
sight seem so strikingly different from ordinary inaequalis that 
one would be inclined to consider them specifically distinct. How- 
ever, a close study fails to reveal any structural differences, even 
the male genitalia being essentially identical in the two forms, 
while the season of flight and flowers visited are also similar, all 
of which would conclusively argue that the two are conspecific. 
Moreover, in New Jersey the gray form seems to intergrade with 
the red, and specimens from that and adjacent states are often 
somewhat intermediate in coloration, the gray predominating but 
the long hairs of the metathorax, base of abdomen, posterior 
-femora, and in the male the clypeal beard being more or less 
strongly ochreous, this sometimes involving the fasciae also. In 
some localities specimens occur fully as rusty as the Texas typical 
series; of two males, both taken at Hainesport, New Jersey, 
March 26, 1905, by Mr. E. Daecke, one is bright rusty, the other 
dull gray, while a precisely similar variation occurs in two males 
from Riverton collected by Mr. H. L. Viereck. One might be 
inclined to consider this difference due entirely to dichromatism 
were it not for the fact that among the many specimens examined 
from the central northern states not one.approaches even remotely 
the rusty coloration of ferrugineus. I am accordingly inclined 
to consider it a geographical variant, probably restricted to the 
southern coast portion of the range of the species, or at least a 
form so distinct as to deserve a name. 
SPECIMENS ExXAMINED—New Jersey: Hainesport, 1; Riverton, 
is; exas: Willis, 31. 
Colletes validus Cresson. 
1868. Colletes valida Cresson, Proceedihgs of the Boston Society of Nat- 
ural History, xii, p. 165, 2 ¢ (December 2, 1868) ; original de- 
scription. 
1872. Colletes valida Cresson, Transactions of the American Entomolog- 
ical Society, iv, p. 248 (November, 1872) ; recorded from Dallas 
county, Texas, both sexes. 
ie 
