April 15, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



581 



contribution to Grandidier's great work on 

 the fauna and natural resources of that is- 

 land. The numbers given by Friese for the 

 apifauna of various countries are worthy of 

 note. Germany is credited with 440 species, 

 Hungary with 510, Tyrol with 380, Great 

 Britain with 200, Sweden with 212, Algiers 

 with 413. The number of described species 

 for the world is estimated at 8,000, of which 

 2,000 belong to Europe alone. Thus it will 

 be seen that the Ethiopian region, though it 

 may actually possess as many as 1,000 to 1,200 

 species, according to Friese's estimate, has a 

 much poorer apifauna than Europe. This 

 bears out the author's statement that bees are 

 not really tropical insects, but have their 

 optimum area of speciation in the north tem- 

 perate zone. An examination of the Ethiopian 

 bees shows, moreover, that a very large pro- 

 portion of the genera and species must have 

 come originally from the palearctie region, 

 the southernmost portion of which is formed 

 by the Mediterranean and part of the Eed 

 Sea littoral of Africa. According to Friese, 

 the Ethiopian region has received its palearc- 

 tie component by immigration " from Egypt, 

 which is purely palearctie, like Algiers and 

 Tunis, over Sudan- Abyssinia to the Kilimand- 

 jaro and Meru, where we still find on the 

 mountains at altitudes of 2,500 to 3,000 m. 

 some purely European forms of Halictvs and 

 a species of Andrena (A. africana) which is 

 very similar to A. helvola of Central Europe." 

 There is a possibility that a similar immigra- 

 tion has taken place from the Mediterranean 

 littoral into the Congo basin along the west 

 coast of the continent. 



The palearctie origin of the great bulk of 

 the Ethiopian apifauna is furthermore at- 

 tested by the fact that though it comprises 

 many cosmopolitan and European genera 

 such as Xylocopa, Nomia, Anthophora and 

 MegacMle, often represented by species that 

 have a striking African facies, it nevertheless 

 contains very few genera that occur nowhere 

 else. As such endemic genera Friese cites 

 Polyglossa, Patellapis, Fidelia, Meliturgula 

 and Eucondylops, each of which seems to 

 have a very restricted range. Meliturgula 

 stands between the genera Panurgus and 



Meliturga; Polyglossa and Patellapis are 

 primitive forms, the former belonging to the 

 CoUetine, the latter to the Halictine subfam- 

 ily. Fidelia is a genus unlike any hitherto 

 described in that it presents a singular mix- 

 ture of Gastrilegid and Podilegid characters. 

 Eucondylops is based on a parasitic species 

 {E. honowi) which Dr. Hans Brauns discov- 

 ered in the nests of the remarkable bees of the 

 genus Allodape. This latter genus ranges 

 over the Indo-Malayan region, Sunda Archi- 

 pelago, New Guinea and a limited portion of 

 eastern Australia, but it is represented by the 

 greatest number of species and individuals in 

 the southern haK of Africa, which is there- 

 fore to be regarded as its true home. Brauns, 

 as quoted by Friese, found that the species of 

 Allodape " do not make cells and provision 

 them like other solitary bees with food for the 

 individual larva, but that the eggs and larvae 

 in all stages of development, the pupse and 

 callow bees are all found together simultane- 

 ously in the same cavity of a hollow twig, 

 which may attain a length of 12 cm. The 

 larvae, which are unique among bees in having 

 extraordinary foot-like appendages, with 

 which they hold the food that is given them, 

 are fed till they mature." These bees are, 

 therefore, truly social and breed and fly 

 throughout the year along the warm coast of 

 Cape Colony. It is interesting to note that 

 the parasitic Eucondylops is very similar to 

 its host Allodape, so that it is to be regarded 

 as having been derived from this genus. This 

 kind of phyletic relationship has been noted 

 between many other parasitic bees and their 

 hosts, and we are now coming to believe that 

 many parasitic ant genera are also derived 

 from the genera of their hosts. 



Friese shows that the Ethiopian apifauna 

 is very rich in certain genera, which are not 

 so well represented in many other parts of the 

 world. Thus he records 162 species of Mega- 

 chile and 61 species of Xylocopa. Other 

 widely distributed genera, however, like An- 

 drena and Osmia, are very poorly represented. 



The social bees of the Ethiopian region 

 comprise 29 species of Trigona, the honey bee 

 and four of its subspecies and varieties {Apis 

 mellifica, A. unicolor-adansoni, unicolor-in- 



