148 
BRITISH BEES. 
comprising a family (our genera Coelioxys and Stelis ); 
and the second is divided into the four families, a, (3, y, 
8, ( a being the modern Megachile; (3, Anthidium; y, 
Chelo stoma and Heriades conjunctively, and 8 is our 
Osmia). The subsection d has two subdivisions, 1 and 
2, the first being a family (our Eucera ) ; and the se¬ 
cond is divided into the two families a and /3 (a com¬ 
prising our 8aropoda, Anthophora, and Ceratina) , and 
the family (3, consisting of the genus Xylocopa , then 
supposed to be indigenous, but whose native occurrence 
lias not been substantiated. 
The fifth subsection, e, is split into two divisions, 1 
and 2, each containing a family (1 is our Apis, and 2, 
our Bombus). 
In this last of his families Mr. Kirby had already 
noticed, with the same sagacity with which he had pre¬ 
viously conjectured the cuckoo-like habits of some of 
the solitary bees, the distinctive structure of some of the 
species, which incapacitated them from providing the 
sustenance of their own young, and which thus reduced 
them to the same category; but he left the idea in its 
supposititious condition, being too modest to use it as a 
mark of separation, but which Newman, on our side of 
the Channel, and St. Fargeau on the other side, subse¬ 
quently, and both nearly about the same time, but with 
the advantage in favour of Newman, distinguished, and 
separated generically, respectively by the names of Apa- 
thus and Psithyrus; the former, having the priority, is 
adopted, according to the rights of precedence in nomen¬ 
clature. 
The above description of Mr. Kirby’s system will 
perhaps be difficult to understand, unless I append the 
naked scheme itself, which is as follows:— 
