BOMBUS. 
311 
with their true species, which can only be ascertained 
with certainty by the examination of the male organs of 
generation, which differ in the various species, but are 
undeviating in their specific uniformity. Of this cha¬ 
racter, which I was the first to discover as being of spe¬ 
cific value for critical determination in the separation of 
the species of very difficult insects, I was enabled to make 
important nse in the genus Dorylus, in a monograph on 
the Dorylidce, an exotic family proximate to the ants, 
and which was published in Taylor’s f Annals of Natural 
History’ for May, June, and July, 1840. The females 
and neuters of Bombus are less subject to such extensive 
dissimilarity, and may be usually associated, by their pu¬ 
bescence, in their legitimate groups. Form also frequently 
lends its aid as subsidiary to their specific identification. 
These and Apis mellifica are our only social bees, 
which live in numerous communities under a kind of 
municipal government which is considerably less per¬ 
fectly organized in the present genus than in the domes¬ 
tic bee, and thence they are called “ villagers,” in con¬ 
tradistinction to the citizenship of the hive bee, earned 
by its comparatively metropolitan institutions, and the 
centralization of its government, which wholly ema¬ 
nates from the pervading influence of the queen upon 
the labours, and, indeed, upon the existence of her sub¬ 
jects. But the Bombi are under much less social re¬ 
straint, and admit of several co-regents in the same com¬ 
munity, without its being productive of any disturbance 
of social harmony. In the account of the genus Apathus , 
the last described, we have seen that the Bombi are sub¬ 
ject to bee-parasites, which in some closely resemble the 
species they infest, and we have also shown there how 
these are distributed. The hive bee is not exposed to 
