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BRITISH BEES. 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
The name of this genus comes from ga/cpos, long , and 
w'\r,face ) in allusion to the length of that portion of 
the head, although this assumed discriminative charac¬ 
teristic is scarcely suitable; this again constitutes 
another of the many instances wherein it would have 
been much preferable to have imposed a name without 
any significancy than one which is not thoroughly ap¬ 
plicable. It is, indeed, always dangerous to attach a 
name to a new genus which has reference to some indi¬ 
vidual peculiarity, for it may eventually exhibit itself as 
limited to the one single species or sex to which it was 
originally applied, as to every other subsequently dis¬ 
covered species in the genus it may be inappropriate. 
Nothing, so far as I am aware, is known of the habits 
of these singular insects, which, I believe, have been 
caught only three times in this country and then only 
the male sex. 
The first, which is in the collection of the British 
Museum, was brought by Dr. Leach from Devonshire; 
the second was caught in the New Forest by the late 
John Walton, Esq., distinguished for his knowledge of 
the British Curculionidce, and who kindly presented it to 
me for my collection when I was at the zenith of my 
enthusiasm for the Hymenoptera, and with that collec¬ 
tion it passed to Mr. Thomas Desvignes, in whose pos¬ 
session it remains; and the third was caught by Mr. 
Stevens, at Weybridge, in Surrey. Why I enter so 
particularly into these circumstances is, that the genus 
is extremely peculiar both for scientific position and for 
structure. In the latter the male is extremely like the 
male of Saropoda and its female is more like the female 
Scopulipedes among the Apidce than one of the An- 
