These bees are subject to the parasitical intrusion of Fœnus jaculator and assectator, which I have repeatedly caught at Battersea, hovering opposite the cells of these insects bored in the shingles forming the enclosure of an old garden outhouse. These parasites are themselves peculiar creatures, forming a type distinct from the Ichneumons, and belonging to the group Aulacus, upon which see my paper in the ‘Entomologist,’ June, 1841. In these insects, the abdomen springs from immediately beneath the scutellum. Chrysis cyanea and ignita are also bred at the expense of these bees, neither of the species of which are uncommon; the smaller one, the C. campanularum, which is the smallest of our true bees, excepting perhaps one or two of the Nomadæ, I used to find in abundance upon the railings of the fields that skirt Hampstead Heath, on the right-hand going from London, parallel with the Vale of Health, and thence rising to the Holly enclosure of the Earl of Mansfield’s mansion. This spot has been productive to me of many very choice aculeate Hymenoptera, and supplied me with them in abundance at a time when even the chief metropolitan collections were bare of them. It has also furnished me with several very desirable Diptera of extremely rare genera. The male of the larger species of this genus Linnæus called florisomne, from its habit of curling up its abdomen and antennæ, and passing the night in flowers. Those which they chiefly frequent are the species of Wallflower, and the Campanula, especially the round-leaved Throatwort.
Genus 22. Heriades, Spinola.
([Plate XIII.] fig. 3 ♂♀.)
Apis ** c 2 γ partly, Kirby.
Gen. Char.: Body glabrous and much punctured. Head globose and curving to the thorax posteriorly; ocelli in a triangle far forward on the vertex; antennæ slightly subclavate, the scape not half so long as the flagellum, the first joint of which is robust, subclavate, and twice the length of the second, which, with the rest, are subequal, very slightly lengthening to the terminal one, which is as long as the basal one and laterally compressed; face slightly convex, cheeks large and convex; clypeus lunulate, convex, and with two minute central teeth on its front margin; labrum longitudinally oblong, rather broadest at the base and slightly waved laterally, concavo-convex and subemarginate at the apex; mandibles subequal, tridentate at the apex, and the central tooth obtuse; cibarial apparatus moderately long, tongue twice the length of the labium, with a small knob at its apex; paraglossæ very short, almost obsolete, coadunate at the base; labial palpi two-thirds the length of the tongue, the two first joints membranous and long, the first one-third the length of the second, which tapers to its acute extremity, before the end of which the two terminal, subclavate, very short, subequal joints are inserted; labium half the length of the tongue, slightly produced in the centre of its inosculation; maxillæ subhastate, two-thirds the length of the tongue; maxillary palpi three-jointed, short, robust, equal, and collectively subfusiform, the terminal one rather acute. Thorax globose; prothorax inconspicuous; scutellum lunulate; post-scutellum linear, transverse; metathorax declining; wings with two submarginal cells, and the commencement of a third indicated, the second larger than the first, subtriangular, and receiving both the recurrent nervures, one at each of its extremities; legs short, rather robust, subsetose and spinulose; posterior tibiæ convex externally and with their plantæ rugose, the latter covered beneath with a dense brush of short hair; claws simple. Abdomen cylindrical, convex above, retuse at the base, and the first and second segments slightly constricted at their extremity, obtuse, and from the end of the third segment sensibly declining to the apex; plane on the venter, where, from the second segment, the plate of each, excepting the glabrous terminal one, is covered with a dense brush of short hair for the conveyance of pollen.
The MALE differs in the antennæ being rather longer, more distinctly filiform, the seventh segment of the abdomen concealed under the extremity of the sixth, and the venter from the third segment longitudinally deeply concave, the plate of the third itself covered with hair; the claws more robust and each equally bifid, not bidentate.
NATIVE SPECIES.
1. truncorum, Linnæus, ♂♀. 3-3½ lines. ([Plate XIII.] fig. 3 ♂♀.)
truncorum, Kirby.