ANTHOCOPA. 293 



From the extreme rarity of the insect, I have been 

 unable to examine the cibarial apparatus, and thence to 

 ascertain upon what substantial grounds the generic 

 distinctions are based, which separate it from Osmia. 

 Whether it was these mere habits of the insect which 

 induced Le Pelletier de St. Fargeau to establish the 

 genus I do not know, but he is always extremely slovenly, 

 and therefore very unsatisfactory in his characteristics, 

 which are never framed in a strictly explicit manner. 

 In consequence of all these difficulties, I have merely 

 been able under the generic character to introduce such 

 as he has given, which I could not derive from the per- 

 sonal external inspection of Mr. Desvignes' female (my 

 own selection of whose bees for the purposes of this work 

 he has been so kind as to lend me, and whom I thus 

 publicly present with my best thanks) . I have there- 

 fore compounded a character as well as I could from 

 St. Fargeau's descriptions, inserted in the tenth volume 

 of the ' Encyclopedie Methodique' and from his work on 

 the Hymenoptera, forming one of the ' Suites a Bitffon.' 



The habits of these bees, as said above, are to excavate 

 vertical cylinders in hard down-trodden pathways and 

 roads, by the sides of fields where corn is grown, and 

 where consequently the common red poppy is abundant. 

 From the petals of the flowers of this plant they cut 

 out semicircular pieces, precisely as is done by Mega- 

 chile with the more rigid leaves of shrubs and trees, 

 and convey them home and line their nests with them, 

 just as is practised by that genus with those leaves. — 

 with this difference merely, that a sufficient portion ot 

 the upper edge of the pieces of the petals used is left 

 projecting, for the purpose of forming a covercle to the 

 nidus, and which, when filled with provender and the 



