106 
BRITISH BEES. 
markably conspicuous for its long and delicately slender 
antennae in the male, each joint of which is nodose at 
its extremity. 
The widely-distributed Nomia seems to abound chiefly 
in India. It, although neither gay nor large, has, in its 
males, a distinguishing form of the posterior tibiae, 
which is greatly incrassated or thickened; a peculiarity 
of structure found also in some other genera of Hyme- 
noptera, and in several genera of the Dipt era, giving the 
insects which have it a remarkable gait. 
The singularly anomalous distortion of these posterior 
legs is conspicuous also in the genus Ancylosceles , which 
is named in allusion to it. 
Another remarkable peculiarity is to he observed in 
the above genus, Mesocheira , as likewise in the superb 
Acanthopus , both of which genera have the spur of the 
intermediate leg pal mated at the extremity, and the 
latter genus is further distirguished by its large size and 
splendid development, and by having the fifth joint of 
the tarsus of the posterior legs longer than the three pre¬ 
ceding united, and covered with a pollinigerous brush as 
dense as that of the elongate first joint of the same limb. 
But the foreign genera which will be most interesting 
to the reader will, I expect, be those of Triyona and 
Mellipona, which, in many peculiarities, seem abortive 
Apes. They seem nature’s first endeavour to construct 
Apis , for they have an apparently imperfect neuration of 
the wing, in which the external submarginal cell is un¬ 
finished. Their only separating distinction from each 
other is the difference in their mandibles, which in Mel - 
lipona are broad and edentate, whereas in Triyona they 
are also broad but denticulated. In Apis these organs 
are merely irregularly enlarged at the extremity, and 
