THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE. 35 
whilst “Italian” is in strictness far too wide, “ Ligurian” 
is at least as much too narrow, for the bee in 
question is chiefly found in Lombardy, Venetia, and 
the south-east of Switzerland, with only off-shoots 
as it were in Piedmont and Genoa to represent 
ancient Liguria. The name “ Italian” is a shortening 
of “ Yellow Italian Alp,” which was the one given it 
by the foreign bee-masters who in our own day brought 
it into notice, and which was a designation as correct 
as could be desired, but too long for practical use. 
“Lieurian,” on the contrary, was the term chosen by 
the first modern observer who appears to have taken 
note of the variety—the Marquis de Spinola, who 
found it in Piedmont in 1805—but who cannot be pro- 
nounced its original discoverer, as the two kinds of bee 
were distinctly described so far back as by Virgil and 
even Aristotle. In adhering herein to the former 
name we have been swayed by the universal practice of 
American and German writers, to which there is no 
such unanimity in our own country to oppose, though 
custom certainly rather inclines the other way. 
As remarked in our opening section, this bee is 
on all hands allowed to be only a variety of the 
common brown insect. Its principal point of differ- 
ence consists in the more or less orange colour 
of the upper rings of its abdomen; but this orange 
varies to so great an extent that while the bee may 
sometimes be taken for a species of wasp, it is at 
other times so little different from our own that it 
would pass unnoticed by most people as anything out 
of the common. The drones are always light yellow 
underneath, instead of whitish as with our bees; 
D 2 
