Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/264

Rh FOREIGN BEES.

Besides the Apis Mellifica, or common domestic bee of Europe, and the genera Bombus and Apathus, or humble-bees in their several species, there are numerous other kinds of the social Apidæ to be met with in different and distant regions of the earth, of which some notice may be acceptable to our readers. We must premise, however, that the present state of our knowledge of this portion of natural history is very imperfect and unsatisfactory, drawn, as it must necessarily be, from the accounts of travellers, to whom it was a subject of very inferior interest, and whose descriptions of the insects are generally so indistinct, that it is nearly impossible to determine to what families they respectively belong. But before proceeding to give some account of the bees domesticated in different parts of the world, which in general are pretty nearly related to the Honey Bee, it may not be improper to make our readers acquainted with a few interesting exotic forms which claim a closer affinity to the tribe last treated of.

The genus, to which we shall first advert, has many properties in common with the Humble Bees. As in them the hinder tibiæ terminate in two spines, and the females are provided with a spoon-shaped expansion for collecting honey. They differ from Bombus and Apathus in having the labrum