STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
819 
* BEE-KILLER. DESCRIPTION OP THE INSECT* 
given, that they may not be confounded with any other species which may 
be closely similar to them. 
They measure to the end of the wings 0.85 to one inch, and to the end of 
the body 0.95 to 1.15, the males being rather smaller than the females. The 
head is short and broad, shaped like a plano-convex lens, flat on its hind 
side and convex in front. Its summit or crown is deeply excavated, leav¬ 
ing a vacant space between tiic upper part of the eyes, in the middle of 
which excavation are the ocelli or eyelets, appearing like three black glassy 
dots placed at the corners of a triangle. The ground color of the head is 
yellow. All the face below the antennae is covered with long hairs, form¬ 
ing a moustache of a light yellow color, with a tuft of short black bristles 
at the mouth, and on each side arc whiskers of a yellowish gray color. 
The base of the head has a sort of collar formed of radiating gray hairs, 
and behind the upper part of each eye is a row of black bristles. The eyes 
are large and protuberant, occupying two-thirds of the surface of the head, 
and are finely reticulated or divided into an immense number of minute 
facets. The antenna; are inserted at the anterior edge of the excavation 
in the crown ot the head. They are small, scarcely reaching to the base 
of the head if turned backward. They are black and composed of three 
joints, the first one longest and cylindric; the second shortest and obconic; 
the third thickest and egg-shaped, its apex ending in a bristle which is 
about equal to the antenna in length, and is slightly more slender towards 
ils tip, where it becomes a little thickened. The trunk or proboscis is as 
long as the head, its end projecting out from the bristles of the face. It 
appears like a long, tapering tube of a hard crustaceous texture, black and 
shining, blunt at the end, with a fringe of hairs around the orifice. In 
one specimen the tongue protrudes from the orifice in the end of the trunk, 
sharp pointed and like the blade of a lancet in shape, hard, shining and 
black. The thorax or fore body is the broadest part of the insect, and is of 
a short oval form, with bluntly rounded ends. It is of a tarnished yellow¬ 
ish brown or butternut color, with two faint gray stripes along the middle 
of the back, alternating with three darker brown ones. It is bearded with 
black hairs and posteriorly with long yellowish gray ones, which are inter¬ 
spersed with black bristles. The abdomen or hind body is long, slender 
and tapering from its base in the male, and is more broad and somewhat 
flattened in the female. It is black above and covered with prostrate hairs, 
which are dull yellow in the male and gray in the female. On the sides 
and beneath the ground color is dull yellow in the male and gray in the 
female, and clothed with gray hairs in both sexes. The two last segments, 
the eighth and ninth, are conspicuously protruded, making two or three 
more segments than are usually visible externally in insects. In the female 
these segments taper to an acute point, and are black and shining. In the 
male they appear like a cylindrical tube with a projecting valve under¬ 
neath at the base, and are coated over with dull yellow hairs, and on the 
npper side with silvery white ones, pressed'to the surface and forming a 
conspicuous oblong spot of this color, which is two-lobed or notched at its 
end. And in the dead specimens before me three bristle like processes 
