XYLOCOPA TENDISCAPA. 
273 
is preserved in the collection of the Rev. F. W. Hope. 
X. latipes is likewise an eastern insect. “ According 
to Mr. Smeathman, these bees are very injurious to 
wooden houses, the posts of which they bore and 
perforate in various directions, so as to weaken them 
very much ; the holes they make are half an inch 
in diameter. Drury hazards the conjecture, that the 
curiously dilated anterior tarsi, and the long hairs 
with which they are furnished, appear to be useful to 
the creature for containing the substance of which 
these insects compose their nests. This, however, 
is hut mere conjecture, since it is the males only that 
possess this curious construction, and this sex takes 
no share in the construction or provisioning of the 
nest in any species of bees with tvhose economy we 
are hitherto acquainted.”* 
Having given these details respecting foreign 
species, most of them hearing some affinitj' to the 
Bombinatrices, we now return to the kinds more 
closely related to the Hive-Bee, which alone have 
been subjected to an assured domestication. In 
Europe we have two distinct species of domestic 
honey-bees. Besides the one commonly cultivated 
viz., the Apis mellijica, which has extended itself 
over the greater part of the European Continent, is 
met with even in Barbary, and has now been natu- 
ralized in the extensive wastes and prairies of North 
America, — the Apis Ligusticci of Spinola, A. Ligu- 
rienne of Latreille, (See PI. XXIV.,) is cultivated 
with success in Italy, and is probably the same 
* Drury’s Illust., Westwood’s ed., vol. ii. p. 98. 
S 
