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HUMBLE-BEES AND FOXGLOVES. 

 By Edmund Selous. 



Not being an expert in the Hynienoptera^and having been 

 quite possibly (or even probably) mistaken in the correct scientific 

 names of some of the bees whose actions are here recorded, I 

 should like at the outset to point out that the interest of the 

 observations contained in the following notes lies, not in knowing 

 what bees do certain things, but what things certain bees do. 

 It is, of course, a very good thing to be sure of the species that 

 one is observing. One should always be so, if one can. Some- 

 times, however, one cannot, but that does not take away all 

 value from what one has seen, except in some special cases 

 where the identity of the species is all-important. Otherwise, 

 an anonymous fact in natural history is not less interesting, on 

 that account, than, in the domain of literature, an anonymous 

 novel, for instance, may be. 



Whilst staying at Frendenstadt, in the Black Forest, during 

 the summer of 1907, I watched Humble-Bees visiting foxgloves, 

 over a certain limited area where these grew thickly, to the 

 exclusion of other flowers. The two species most frequently seen 

 here were Bombus hypnorum, and another large Humble-Bee 

 with a dusky, yellowish patch on the thorax, and a somewhat 

 long and curved abdomen, the specific identity of which I have 

 not been able to ascertain. The latter was much the commoner 

 of the two, and I have nothing further to record of it than that 

 it invariably, according to my observation, rifles the foxglove in 

 the ordinary manner, by which I mean that, in order to do so, 

 it first enters the mouth of the elongated sack or " glove " 

 formed by the conjoined petals. B. hypnorum also usually 

 enters the flowers, but individuals are to be seen which go, 

 apparently by preference, to the exposed green calyces from 

 which the blossom has dropped. 



B. terrestris is less common there than with us. The first 

 individual I particularly noticed was visiting the exposed calyces, 



