Insects. 1149 



Male. — Length 6 — 6^ lines. Black. The head has the face densely 

 and the vertex thinly clothed with cinereous hair. Thorax clothed 

 with cinereous hair. Scutellum bidentate, with black hair. The 

 intermediate tibiae outside, and the posterior at their extreme base, 

 have a cinereous patch. Abdomen, the basal margin of the first seg- 

 ment thinly clothed with cinereous hair, a patch of same colour at the 

 lateral margins of this and the following ; and the third and fourth 

 segments have two minute white spots within their margins. In rare 

 instances the fifth segment has also two minute spots. The cinereous 

 colouring is fusco-cinereous in very recent specimens. 



There can be little or no doubt of this being the true Apis punctata 

 of Fabricius, and it is universally considered to be so. Any other 

 species of the genus with which I am acquainted, possesses such dis- 

 criminating marks of difference, that Fabricius must have pointed 

 them out ; the following species comes perhaps the nearest to it, but 

 the spots on the abdomen are square instead of round, and easily dis- 

 tinguished. 



That the varieties described constitute but one species, T have not 

 a doubt, having found not only those, but intermediate shades of va- 

 riety, in the nests of Anthophora retusa, I have a specimen totally 

 black. In digging down a bank containing the nests, I was surprised 

 at the great numbers of perfect insects which I found dead in uno- 

 pened cells, both of Anthophora and Melecta; this was early in June, 

 when the insects were abundant. I have since examined other colo- 

 nies with similar results. 



Sp. 2. Melecta Atropos, Newman. 



Female. — Length, 6 lines. Intensely black and shining. The 

 clypeus clothed with silvery white, and the vertex with cinereous 

 pubescence. Basal joint of the antennae fringed with silvery white 

 hair. Thorax closed anteriorly with cinereous pubescence. Scutel- 

 lum bidentate, black. The metathorax has a few silvery hairs at the 

 lateral margins, and all the tibiae have an external white patch. Ab- 

 domen ; the first segment has a silvery fringe upon its basal margin, 

 forming patches laterally, the second, third and fourth segments have 

 on each side an elongate quadrate white spot. This is the Melecta 

 Lachesis of Newman. 



Male.-~ Length 5j — 6 lines. Shining black and variegated exactly 

 as in the female, with the addition of a silvery fringe on the anterior 

 and intermediate femora, and an additional pair of white spots on the 



