GEOGRAPHY OF THE GENERA. 
65 
that its omission in any instance is to be regretted, as 
in many ways, and in all kinds of collections, it might 
be very serviceable to science. To our present purpose 
it has but a collateral interest as an object of curiosity, 
yet curiosity has led to many discoveries which have 
proved valuable to mankind. All the divisions of natu¬ 
ral science have a mutual and convertible bearing, and 
closely interlink in their relations. Thus, insects de¬ 
note the botany, which further indicates the climate or 
elevation and soil; and the superficial soil will point 
geological conclusions to subsoil and substructure. One 
natural science well mastered gives a key to the great 
storehouse of nature’s riches, and yields a harvest of 
many different crops. This episode may be excused 
for the hint it is intended to give of the paramount im¬ 
portance of the correct registration of special localities. 
The genus Colletes also occurs in the Canary Islands, 
which shows a trending tendency to its southern ha¬ 
bitat at the Cape of Good Hope. It occurs on the west¬ 
ern edge of South America, in Chili; it is found on its 
northern boundary in Columbia, and has been disco¬ 
vered in the southern States of North America, in Flo¬ 
rida and Georgia; but there is no record of its further 
northern occurrence upon that continent. About thirty 
species are known. 
The genus Prosopis, or as it is more familiarly known 
by the name of Hyl^eus, is found in some of our native 
species throughout France and Germany, and, like the 
preceding, as high up as Finland, through Denmark and 
Sweden, to the adjacent parts of Russia. It is remark¬ 
able that it is caught in Algeria, although not recorded 
as occurring in several of the southern European States. 
But the apparent restriction of some of our species 
