SHORT NOTICES OF BENJAMIN D. WALSH AND OTHERS 
39 
that short period, is astonishing. lie voluntarily discharged the 
duties of State Entomologist of Illinois during the last years of 
his life, and as such (Acting State Entomologist) issued his First 
Annual Report for 1867. His final appointment, with a salary of 
two thousand dollars per annum, w T as, after much delay, confirmed 
by the State Senate but a short time before his death. 
My relations with this remarkable man lasted for nearly ten years. 
Between May 21, 1860, and October 27, 1869 (just three weeks 
before his death), I kept up a most active and instructive corre¬ 
spondence concerning Oynipidae with him. The sixty-five, gener¬ 
ally very long, letters from him in my possession would alone fill a 
volume. In these letters he often assumed a jocular, rollicking 
tone of which the following is a specimen: “ By the way, if you 
have your photograph executed head and shoulders only , I wish 
you would be kind enough to send me a copy. You formerly let 
me have a photograph of full-length size, but, — to tell you the 
truth, — I do not take any interest whatever in the sartorial and 
sutorial questions of what style of breeches and boots you wear.” 
I never had the pleasure of meeting Walsh, but, on my return 
from California, in August, 1876, I went to Rock Island for the 
sole purpose of paying a visit to his grave. An obituary notice 
of him by his, at that time, young friend and collaborator C. Y. Riley 
(who later became the greatest economic entomologist of the cen¬ 
tury) will be found in the American Entomologist , St. Louis, 
Missouri, Yol. II, December, 1869, p. 65-68. A very good portrait 
is added to it. 
It is a strange coincidence that Walsh, Riley, and Walsh’s suc¬ 
cessor as State Entomologist, Le Baron, all met with a more or 
less unnatural death: Walsh, from a railway accident, Riley from 
a fall with his bicycle, and Le Baron from the consequences of a 
sunstroke. 
One of my most worthy correspondents and contributors to my 
general entomological work was Dr. William L e Baron, of 
Geneva, Ill. I reproduce two passages from an obituary of him 
which appeared in a local paper and was sent to me after his death. 
It worthily reflects his moral merit as a man in the opinion of his 
