Brazilian Honey Bees. 499 



but every intermediate degree is to be found, so that it is im- 

 possible to draw a line of demarcation between the species. 



All these bees are honey gatherers, but the honey collected by 

 the different species varies greatly in quality ; from the nests of 

 some it is excellent, from others worthless. The honey of the 

 species " Mombuca " is said to be black and sour, whilst that of 

 " Tataira " is excellent ; the quality being dependent on the 

 species of flowers from which the honey is collected. This great 

 difference in the honey of the various species is apparently con- 

 firmatory of the fact that each species confines itself to particular 

 flowers, never visiting any other kinds. The different relative 

 length of the tongue in the species is also confirmatory of the 

 same supposition ; indeed, the great diversity in this respect ob- 

 servable in these bees, appears to me to be analogous to a similar 

 diversity in the length of the bills of humming birds, which, it is 

 well known, are always adapted for reaching the nectaries of the 

 particular flowers which they usually frequent. Those species of 

 Melipona and Trigona that have the tongue short in all pro- 

 bability frequent flowers having open corollas, whilst others, as 

 Melipona anthidioides, furnished with an elongated tongue, extract 

 their food from elongated tubular flowers. Should this sup- 

 position prove to be correct, it will still further confirm an 

 opinion I have long entertained, that characters, which in cer- 

 tain groups of Hymenoptera, serve admirably the purpose of 

 generic subdivision, will fail to do so when applied to others. 

 The wing system, so admirably adapted generally for the sub- 

 division of the fossorial tribe, fails to answer that purpose when 

 applied to \\\e Scolndce ; the typical gexwxs Scolia presents four, 

 if not five, distinct types of neuration in the anterior wings; the 

 difficulty could undoubtedly be at once overcome by giving to 

 each division a different generic name ; but all the species are so 

 linked together by other characters, as well as by habit, all in fact 

 so obviously belong to one genus, that Burmeister and myself at 

 the same lime, each ignorant of the other being engaged upon the 

 same family, included them all in the genus Scolia, forming sec- 

 tions for the reception of the species differing in the neuration of 

 their anterior wings. 



The history of Melipona and Trigona is still in a great degree 

 enveloped in obscurity ; no one, that I am aware of, has hitherto 

 obtained all the sexes even of a single species of either of these 

 genera. M. Guerin found six or seven females in a nest of 

 Melipona fulvipes and a great number of workers. For the pur- 

 pose of examination, Mhen describing the species in the present 



