FOREIGN GENERA OF BEES. 
105 
Xylocopa. Of the habits of the former we know nothing, 
but those of the latter we are intimately acquainted 
with, through the elaborate descriptions given by Reau¬ 
mur and the Rev. L. Guilding, the latter of whom made 
his observations upon a species found in the island of St. 
Vincent’s, in the West Indies. This last genus exhibits 
in some of its species the giants among the bees, and one 
is especially so, a native of India, the Xylocopa latipcs, 
which is an inch and a quarter long, and more than three 
inches in the expansion of its black, acute wings; and it is 
also noticeable from the anterior tarsus in the male being 
greatly dilated and white, the bee itself being intensely 
black, and which in this same sex has enormous eyes 
united at the vertex, as in the male Apis, or drone. In 
this genus, as in many other genera of bees, there is often 
a great discrepancy in the appearance of the sexes, they 
being so totally dissimilar that no scientific skill has 
hitherto been able to discover a clue for uniting toge¬ 
ther correctly, by scientific process merely, the sexes of a 
species; thence the numbers of the species in such ge¬ 
nera are unduly augmented beyond their natural limits, 
from the fact of observation having neglected to associate 
the legitimate partners. 
In some of our native genera this same difficulty 
existed, which, however, is gradually diminishing as the 
authentic sexes are slowly discovered. 
Exotic bees exhibit also a peculiarity I had occasion 
to observe before, in reference to our own bees, amounting 
perhaps to a law, viz the more highly-coloured condition 
of the parasite, for we find all the parasitical bees of those 
latitudes, usually gorgeously arrayed in metallic splen¬ 
dour, as instanced in Aglae, Mesonychia, Mesocheira, 
etc., and Melissoda (my Ischnocera , in Lardner), is re- 
