MELECTA. 
257 
? Atroposl Newman. 
? Lachesis, Newman. 
2. armata, Panzer, $ $ . 6-7 lines. 
punctata, Kirby. 
? Tisiphone, Newman. 
? Alecto, Newman. 
? Clotho, Newman. 
? Megeera, Newman. 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Named from fieXc, honey, Xeyco, I collect; which is 
scarcely the case, for the parasites, although they may 
indulge in the luxury of honey as epicures, or resort to 
it as a repast, cannot be said to collect it, for it is only 
the labouring bees that truly collect it for the purpose 
of storing. 
These insects are extremely handsome, their ground¬ 
colour being intensely black, brightly shining on the 
abdomen, upon the segments of which it is laterally 
ornamented with silvery pubescent tufts and spots; the 
black legs are also variously ringed with similar silver 
down. The great variation these spots and markings 
undergo—from what cause we know not—has induced 
several entomologists to consider them as distinct spe¬ 
cies. But the strongest varieties so rarely recur with 
identical ornaments, and as almost all can be closelv 
connected together in a regular series by interlacing 
differences impossible to divide, it Avould be certainly 
incorrect, without stronger characteristics, to raise such 
fugitive variations to specific rank. W- hether the cu¬ 
rious spines of the scutellum which they possess fur¬ 
nish a more certain character is doubtful, for we find 
all such processes equally liable to variation in size and 
s 
