GEOGRAPHY OF THE GENERA. 
77 
more or less builders or upholsterers. The genus lias a 
wide range, and is tolerably numerous, numbering more 
than fifty species. Some of our own occur throughout 
Europe, and, like the two preceding genera, are found 
in the highest continental latitudes. Some of ours also 
occur in Algeria and the Canaries, other species in 
Albania and Moravia. In Africa they are found in 
Egypt, Barbary, and Port Natal, and in the New World 
from Florida, in the United States, through Nova Scotia 
to Hudson’s Bay. 
The genus Apathus, which is parasitical upon Bomhus, 
and to the uninitiated has all the appearance of this 
genus, seems to be the only instance of a parasitical 
genus of bees so closely resembling the <rtro?, (as we 
may, perhaps, for the sake of avoiding a periphrasis, be 
allowed to call the bee upon which the parasite is found,) 
as to be so easily liable to be mistaken for it, and which 
was indeed the case by even such a sagacious entomo¬ 
logist as the distinguished Latreille; but Kirby had 
already noticed the difference, suggesting its separation 
from Bombus, until about the time that St. Fargeau was 
induced to propose a distribution of the Hymenoptera, 
based generally upon economy and habits, to which he 
had been led by a refining investigation of structure, 
that the distinguishing difference was appreciated, and 
used generically, by Mr. Newman. This difference, like 
many other simple facts, now that it has been found, is 
very obvious. It consists in the genus having no neu¬ 
ters, and the female of the species no polliniferous 
organs, but the determination of the legitimate males, by 
means other than empirical, is still difficult. In our own 
species this genus ranges throughout northern Europe, 
as high as Lapland ; a cause for which we shall discover 
