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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Interior of the Le Conte Memorial Lodge. Photographed by Hallett-Taylor Co. 



tific man though he did not publish his 

 work. His uncle, John Le Conte, was a 

 naturalist, whose son, John Lawrence, 

 was an eminent entomologist. His 

 brother was a prominent physicist. A 

 nephew is one of our leading physicists, 

 and his son is a scientific man. Joseph, 

 John and John Lawrence Le Conte 

 were all members of the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, whose membership has 

 included approximately only the two 

 hundred leading American men of sci- 

 ence of the past half century. We have 

 here a very clear case of scientific 

 heredity or family tradition. 



Le Conte belonged to the type of sci- 

 entific man that can scarcely survive 

 under the conditions of modern special- 

 ization. He taught practically all the 

 sciences, including mathematics, with 

 French added. He made contributions 

 to geology, zoology and psychology, 

 and wrote much on the theory of evo- 

 lution and the relations of science to 

 religion. We can not here undertake 

 to give an account of his life, not in 

 itself eventful but covering a wide 



field and a long time, touching the 

 south, the north and the west. We 

 must refer readers to the autobiography 

 for an account of the life and life-work 

 of a single-minded and truly great man. 



SIR WILLIAM FLOWER. 

 Flower was one of the notable group 

 of naturalists who gave distinction to 

 Great Britain during the second half 

 of the nineteenth century. He can not 

 be ranked with Darwin, scarcely with 

 Huxley, but his contributions to com- 

 parative anatomy and to museum ad- 

 ministration were of the highest impor- 

 tance. Five years after his death a 

 memoir has been prepared by Mr. C. J. 

 Cornish with the cooperation of his son 

 and of Lady Flower. The title page 

 states that the work is ' a personal me- 

 moir.' In view of this explicit state- 

 ment it would perhaps be unfair to 

 criticize the book for paying more at- 

 tention to Flower's high character, his 

 beautiful family life, his christian 

 faith and his relations with the nobility 

 than to his contributions to science and 



