aticks, and they may have superseded the iiiditicating bee, by 
depositing their ova in the nests of the latter, although it certainly 
is a remarkable circumstance that some one of these bees has 
never escaped destruction in the several instances in which they 
have been thus bred.” ihis seems to me to be a far-fetched idea, 
as Prosopis are comparatively common, and the two bees he men- 
tions are rare, one particidarly so. I have this season bred, I 
suppose, about forty of, 1 think, three different species from bramble 
sticks, and as I opened the sticks and e.\j)osed the cells, am able 
to .say tliere was no other bee in my cells. This is all I have 
found of the history of these little bees, but accident has eidight- 
vned me a little on their ecommiy. During the winter, Avhihst 
digging out some cells of Colletca on Mousehold from a hard s;ind- 
bank, 1 lound a series of three cells of, as 1 hoped, the mre little 
Colletes nmyginnta / the cells were very like Colletes, ojdy with- 
out the space generally found between the cells of the latter, and 
were white, but 1 was doomed to disaj)pointnient, for instead of 
C. marginata, I reared Prosopis signata. At roringland, in 
‘Ijoniiiy out Collates, 1 again came upon the Prosopis, but this 
time in some old cells of Colletes, of which the insect had availed 
itself, as 1 have “found Osniia rufa do with old cells Anthophora 
iicervonnn. At Harford bridges, I saw some small black bees 
Hying about a hard sandbank, and settling just like Hal ictus, for 
which 1 at firet took them ; 1 caught some, and they prov'ed to be 
two species of Prosopis, both sexes ; I afterwards .saw one of 
P. signata enter a hole at the same jdace. One evening when 1 
knew they would be at home, I dug out some of the holes I found 
in the bank, and, as I expected, found Prosopis, and at the bottom 
of two of the burrows, behind our insects, two males of a small 
Halictus. I also found another nest in the same place, with the 
cells formed in an old boring of Colletes; the insects were all 
gone. I also found several old nests, which there is no mistaking, 
as these two bees, Colletes and Prosopis, are i-)eculiar in being the 
only two genera of bees that have obtuse instead of acute tongues, 
and are the only two that plaster their tubes with a peculiar gold- 
beater’s-skin-like substance, for which their tongues are admirably 
adapted. I have also found these bees, both male and female, 
with their heads out of the burrows, amongst a colony of Chslos- 
/onia'campanulariini, (a small bee that burrows in po.sts and rails,) 
