My exhibition of Kirby’s grouping, in the preceding section, where I treat of the scientific cultivation of British bees, will fully explain why I could not adopt that arrangement.
Why I cannot follow Latreille’s, is, that in his last elaboration, in his ‘Families Naturelles,’ published in 1825, which must be considered as his final view, he does not satisfactorily divide the _Andrenidæ_, of the genera of which he has made a complete jumble. With the _Apidæ_ in his group of _Dasygasters_, he intermixes _Ceratina_, separating it from the group of _Scopulipedes_, where it truly belongs by every characteristic, and he mingles also with them the two cuckoo genera _Stelis_ and _Cœlioxys_, which are merely parasites upon these _Dasygasters_, and can only be associated by the structural conformity of the two submarginal cells to the superior wings, and the length of the labrum, the latter being a character of very secondary importance; and further, he dissevers the _Scopulipedes_ in placing _Panurgus_ at the commencement of the _Apidæ_, and the rest proximate to the social bees.
Westwood, in his modification of Latreille’s system, certainly divides the _Andrenidæ_ better than his master had done, but he does not go far enough. Besides, he interposes _Halictus_ and _Lasioglossum_, (the latter admitted as a genus merely out of courtesy to Curtis, who had elevated it to that rank in his ‘British Entomology,’ although it is nothing more than a male _Halictus_), between _Sphecodes_ and _Andrena_ with _Cilissa_, these having lanceolate tongues with lacerate paraglossæ, whereas _Halictus_ has a very acute tongue, and its paraglossæ are entire, as is also the case with _Dasypoda_, from which _Halictus_ is thus divided. In the _Apidæ_, he does not separate the cuckoo-bees, but with Latreille intermixes _Cœlioxys_ and _Stelis_ with the artisan bees, although without retaining Latreille’s convenient and suitable name of _Dasygasters_, for this group of mechanics. The same objection I take to his _Scopulipedes_ as that expressed above, relative to Latreille’s.
Precisely the same fault I find with the _Andrenidæ_ of Smith, as that urged above with respect to Westwood’s. He is more careful with his _Apidæ_, his _Cuculinæ_ being all genuine parasites, but he includes _Ceratina_ with the _Dasygasters_, with which it has no affinity of structure, and only a slight analogy in the _form_ merely of its abdomen without its hairiness beneath, to that of _Osmia_, from whose proximity he takes it to place it near _Heriades_, when it is certainly intimately allied in every respect with the _Scopulipedes_, and by reason of its subclavate antennæ might suitably be brought into juxtaposition with _Panurgus_, did not its obsolete paraglossæ and three submarginal cells interfere with its occupying this position. To his _Scopulipedes_ the same objection is valid as that taken to Latreille’s and Westwood’s disposition of them. Amongst the social bees he separates _Bombus_ from _Apis_, by the intervention of _Apathus_, which is scarcely consistent.