260 
BRITISH BEES. 
second recurrent nervure also about the centre; legs 
short, stout, the tibia slightly spinulose externally; claws 
very small, short, robust and simple. Abdomen obtusely 
conical, truncated at the base, its terminal segment tri¬ 
angular, and the lateral margins slightly reflected. 
The male scarcely differs, excepting in the usual male 
characteristics, and that the apical segment of the ab¬ 
domen is rounded and margined. 
NATIVE SPECIES. 
1 . variegatus, Linnseus, $ $ . 3-4 lines. (Plate XI. 
fig. 2 ^ ? •) 
variegatus, Kirby. 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
It is difficult to assign a reason for the name of this 
genus, or to trace an applicable derivation from iir(a\o ?, 
for the insect in no way suits, either directly or by anti¬ 
phrase, any of the significations of this word. It is one 
of the prettiest of our little bees, and is parasitical upon 
the Colletes Daviesiana,and it mav be found in abundance 
wherever the metropolis of this species occurs. There 
is one special locality near Bexley, in Kent, a vertical 
sandbank within a few hundred yards of the village, 
where I have always found it in the spring months, and 
have there taken it as numerously as I wished. I have 
already alluded, in another part of this work, to the 
uniformly greater beauty of the parasitical bees, to those 
which they infest, and their exceedingly different appear¬ 
ance in every case excepting in that of the genus Apa- 
thas. We might have expected that they would have 
been disguised like these, the better to carry on their 
nefarious practices, but what can well be more dissimilar 
than Epeolus and Colletes, or than Nomada and all its 
