Studies of North American Bees 5 



tunity to make a critical study of various species represented in 

 the collection of the United States National Museum at Wash- 

 ington, including a considerable number of types. It might also 

 be mentioned in passing that, when the genus Nomada is mono- 

 graphed, it will be necessary for the taxonomist to have a very 

 large amount of material from many localities to discover the 

 truths in the apparently very great individual and geographic 

 variation, and great care must be exercised in the proper match- 

 ing of the sexes. Undoubtedly when this is done, the current 

 number of nominal species will be greatly reduced. 



THE TYPE SPECIES OF NOMADA 



Although the genus Nomada was one of the earliest segregates 

 from the all-including Linnean bee-genus Apis, there seems to 

 be no definite allusion to the type species of this genus in our 

 recent literature, and, in fact, authors seem to be at variance as 

 to the authority for the genus itself. Schmiedeknecht in his 

 monograph of the European species of Nomada {Apidae 

 Europeae, 1882) credits the genus to Fabricius, and in this he has 

 been followed by other authors, including Friese (Die Bicnen 

 Eiiropas, I, p. 214, 1895) and, in a recent paper, Cockereil (Uni- 

 versity of Colorado Studies, VII, p. 183, 1910). Fabricius first 

 used this name in 1775 (Systema Entomologiae) and included 

 under it a number of species without designating a type. The 

 first mentioned of these, Nomada histrio, is a Crocisa and was 

 referred to that genus by Jurinc at the time of its erection in 

 1807 (Noiivelle mcthode classer les Hymcnoptcrcs, p. 241) ; the 

 second species, Nomada variegata, is an Epcolns and as it was 

 the only species referred to that genus at the time of its founding 

 by Latreille in 1802 (Histoire naturelle des fourmis, p. 427, and 

 Histoire naturelle des criistaccs et des insectes, III, p. 375) it is 

 therefore the type species of Epeolus, and was in fact so 

 designated by Latreille in 1810; the third species, Nomada rufi- 

 cornis, was the same as the Apis ruficornis of Linnaeus (Systema 

 Naturae, 10 edition, p. 578, n. 26, 1758) and is the only Linnean 

 species of the tenth edition which is still retained in the genus 

 Nomada as at present understood. Nomada ruficornis TLin- 



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