BOMBUS. 311 



with their true species, which can only be ascertained 

 with certainty by the examination of the male organs of 

 generation, which differ in the various species, but are 

 undeviating in their specific uniformity. Of this cha- 

 racter, which I was the first to discover as being of spe- 

 cific value for critical determination in the separation of 

 the species of very difficult insects, I was enabled to make 

 important use in the genus Dorylus, in a monograph on 

 the Dorylidae, an exotic family proximate to the ants, 

 and which was published in Taylor's ' Annals of Natural 

 History ' for May, June, and July, 1840. The females 

 and neuters of Bombus are less subject to such extensive 

 dissimilarity, and may be usually associated, by their pu- 

 bescence, in their legitimate groups. Form also frequently 

 lends its aid as subsidiary to their specific identification. 

 These and Apis mellifica are our only social bees, 

 which live in numerous communities under a kind of 

 municipal government which is considerably less per- 

 fectly organized in the present genus than in the domes- 

 tic bee, and thence they are called " villagers," in con- 

 tradistinction to the citizenship of the hive bee, earned 

 by its comparatively metropolitan institutions, and the 

 centralization of its government, which wholly ema- 

 nates from the pervading influence of the queen upon 

 the labours, and, indeed, upon the existence of her sub- 

 jects. But the Bonibi are under much less social re- 

 straint, and admit of several co-regents in the same com- 

 munity, without its being productive of any disturbance 

 of social harmony. In the account of the genus Apathus, 

 the last described, we have seen that the Bombi are sub- 

 ject to bee-parasites, which in some closely resemble the 

 species they infest, and we have also shown there how 

 these are distributed. The hive bee is not exposed to 



