The MALE scarcely differs in personal appearance, excepting that its antennæ are more robust and its ornamental pubescence is more profuse, its posterior tibiæ very robust and almost triangular, and the terminal segment of its abdomen slightly emarginate and concave at its extremity.
1. punctata, Fabricius, ♂ ♀. 6 lines. (Plate XI. fig. 1 ♂ ♀.) _? Atropos_, Newman. _? Lachesis_, Newman. 2. _armata_, Panzer, ♂ ♀. 6-7 lines. _punctata_, Kirby. _? Tisiphone_, Newman. _? Alecto_, Newman. _? Clotho_, Newman. _? Megæra_, Newman.
Named from _μέλι_, _honey_, _λέγω_, _I collect_; which is scarcely the case, for the parasites, although they may indulge in the luxury of honey as epicures, or resort to it as a repast, cannot be said to collect it, for it is only the labouring bees that truly collect it for the purpose of storing.
These insects are extremely handsome, their ground-colour being intensely black, brightly shining on the abdomen, upon the segments of which it is laterally ornamented with silvery pubescent tufts and spots; the black legs are also variously ringed with similar silver down. The great variation these spots and markings undergo—from what cause we know not—has induced several entomologists to consider them as distinct species. But the strongest varieties so rarely recur with identical ornaments, and as almost all can be closely connected together in a regular series by interlacing differences impossible to divide, it would be certainly incorrect, without stronger characteristics, to raise such fugitive variations to specific rank. Whether the curious spines of the scutellum which they possess furnish a more certain character is doubtful, for we find all such processes equally liable to variation in size and form. What can be the uses of these spines? They can hardly be for defence, although an entomologist has said that a male which he held endeavoured to pinch by that means. We find similar processes in the same situation in _Cœlioxys_, equally a parasitical genus; but the former genus infests the _Scopulipedes_ and the latter the _Dasygasters_, whose economies are so very different, and thus it can hardly be supposed to have reference to habits. In _Epeolus_ and _Stelis_ the same part is mucronated, a tendency to which we see in the _Nomadæ_ with subclavate antennæ. Under _Anthophora_ I have given an account of the pugnacious spirit of these insects in their contests with the sitos, and it is necessary to be cautious in handling them, as they sting very severely. Our two native species are parasitical upon the two species of the first division of _Anthophora_,—those which are gregarious. The circumstance of _Melecta_ being often caught with many of the extremely young larvæ of _Meloë_ upon it seems to confirm the fact of this coleopterous insect preying upon _Anthophora_, as it may be thus assumed to prey simultaneously upon the larva of _Melecta_. I have never captured these insects upon flowers, nor can I trace what flowers they frequent, although Latreille tells us, in the name he has imposed, that they are honey collectors; but Curtis reports that he has found the genus upon the common furze or whin (_Ulex Europæus_).