LAPIDARY OR ORANGE-TAILED BEE. 
253 
rufescent hairs, palest on the thighs ; underside of 
the body flavescent. Varieties occur nearly one half 
smaller than the ordinary length, which often exceeds 
ten lines. 
This is likewise a common bee, not only in Britain, 
but in most other parts of Europe. It frequents 
flowers throughout the summer, and is partial to 
hilly pastures and imperfectly cultivated places. It 
stores up honey with great assiduity — strenue melli- 
ficans, is Linneeus’s expression — and it defends it, as 
most schoolboys can testify, with no small zeal and 
pertinacity. Its colonies are not so populous as those 
of B. terrestris, but they are more so than the asso- 
ciations of B. muscorum. Owing to the great diffe- 
rence in the markings, the male has been mistaken 
by Fabricius and others for a separate species, which 
he named B. arbustorum. 
MOSS OR CARDER BEE. 
( BOMBUS MUSCORUM.) 
P i . ate XVI. Fig. 3. 
Apis muscorum, Linn. — Donov. xi. 70, PI. 382, fig. 2 
Kirby's Monog. Ap. ii. 317. — A. senilis, Fab A. impavidus, 
melleus and melinus, Harris'' Expos. Pis. 38 and 40.— 
The Cording Bee, Bingley, iii. 288. 
Usually rather a smaller insect than either of the 
preceding, although the females sometimes attain the 
length of ten lines. The general colour of the whole 
body is pale yellow, the hirsuties rather long ; probos- 
cis the length of the thorax, (it is represented in the 
accompanying fig. with the parts extended and sepa- 
