29 
coloured flies, very fond of flowers; ,they fly with amazing 
rapidity, and many delight to hover immovably over certain 
spots, to which they will return, if disturbed for a considerable 
number of times“ (Westw. Introd. I, p. 557). heir colouring 
consists in many cases of yellow crossbands and spots on the 
abdomen, and also of similar marks on the thorax; or else they 
are clothed with a hairy covering of different colours. 
i. tenax is of a duller colouring than most of the species 
of the family and, in that respect, it has remarkable resem- 
blance to a honey-bee.* This resemblance is so great (says 
Réaumur, IV, p. 440) (1) that, accustomed as I am to see bees, 
I hardly ever dared to take one of these flies in my hand with- 
out hesitation.... The colours, the size, the conformation and 
the proportions of the different parts of the body of these two 
insects, belonging to two different Orders, are very much alike. 
The bees have a slightly more elongated body, and their head 
is proportionally smaller. The fly keeps the wings more or less 
divaricated; on the contrary bees at rest keep them above the 
abdomen, the one covering the other; but in sucking flowers, 
or collecting wax, they often have them divaricated. Both in- 
sects frequent flowers and behave upon them in more or less 
the same manner* ete. 
Here is another testimony from a person who, without any 
previous acquaintance with /. tenax, was struck by its resem- 
blance to a bee; he writes to the Entomological Division of 
the Dep. of Agric. in Washington: ,I send a cage of insects 
which made their advent in our green-house with the blooming 
of Farfugium grande, in the economy of which flower they are 
apparently in some manner concerned. They act like bees, and 
greatly resemble them, not only in the busy way in which they 
(1) There is an evident error in Réaumur, in the reference to the plate 
XXXI fig. 8. The true LH. tenaa is represented (rather indifferently) on pl. XX 
figure 7; compare the explanation of this figure on p. 283, Mouche en forme 
@abeille ete. Plate XXXI figure 8 is correctly quoted p. 474 and represents 
Bristalis arbustorum Q, or some allied species, 
