count,
was not worthy of admission into the zoological scheme.

It is true that an almost exclusively necrological study is obligatory
at first. To fill one's boxes with insects stuck on pins is an operation
within the reach of all; to watch those same insects in their mode of
life, their work, their habits and customs is quite a different
thing. The nomenclator who lacks the time--and sometimes also the
inclination--takes his magnifying-glass, analyzes the dead body
and names the worker without knowing its work. Hence the number of
appellations the least of whose faults is that they are unpleasant to
the ear, certain of them, indeed, being gross misnomers. Have we not,
for instance, seen the name of Lithurgus, or stone-worker, given to a
Bee who works in wood and nothing but wood? Such absurdities will be
inevitable until the animal's profession is sufficiently familiar to
lend its aid in the compiling of diagnoses. I trust that the future will
see this magnificent advance in entomological science: men will reflect
that the impaled specimens in our collections once lived and followed
a trade; and anatomy will be kept in its proper place and made to leave
due room for biology.

Fabricius did not commit himself with his expression Anthidium, which
alludes to the love of flowers, but neither did he mention anything
characteristic: as all Bees have the same passion in a very high degree,
I see no reason to treat the Anthidia as more zealous looters than the
others. If he had known their cotton nests, perhaps the Scandinavian
naturalist would have given them a more logical denomination. As for me,
in a language wherein technical parade is out of place, I will call them
the Cotton-bees.

The term requires some limiting. To judge by my finds, in fact, the old
genus Anthidium, that of the classifying entomologists, comprises in my
district two very different corporations. One is known to us and works
exclusively in wadding; the other, which we are about to study, works in
resin, without ever having recourse to cotton. Faithful to my extremely
simple principle of defining the worker, as far as possible, by his
work, I will call the members of this guild the Resin-bees. Thus
confining myself to the data supplied by my observations, I divide the
Anthidium group into equal sections, of equal importance, for which I
demand special generic titles; for it is highly illogical to call the
carders of wool and the kneaders of resin b