534 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OF [1897. 



pineal Society and the Transactions of the American Entomological 

 Society contain by far the greatest proportion and all the most im- 

 portant of them. 



Yet a mere enumeration of the number of titles and of the number 

 of genera and species described does not give an adequate idea of 

 Dr. Horn's contribution to the literature of American Coleopterology. 

 He never wrote merely to fill space and few of his titles represent 

 short notes. Almost all represent the results of original study and 

 many titles cover considerably over 100 pages of print. This print 

 itself is usually condensed and so is the language of the author. Dr. 

 Horn possessed in an unusual degree the power of succinct statement 

 and he never wasted words. It was his practice to formulate his 

 conclusions in the briefest possible manner and to present his proofs 

 simply and without argument. 



Though but 150 genera are credited to him, yet of the almost 

 1,900 accredited to our fauna he has studied nearly all and has 

 actually characterized for the Classification by far the greatest 

 number of them. 



While the species described by him number but 1,550 yet in de- 

 scribing these he made known to us more clearly than they were 

 known before, more than half of the 11,000 described North Amer- 

 ican Coleoptera. The work he did was simply stupendous and it 

 grows on one as he considers it. Everywhere order appears out of 

 chaos ; under his touch what we had considered a hopeless tangle is 

 now found to unravel easily, and we are surprised at the wealth of 

 good characters in series which had theretofore been so distressingly 

 similar in appearance that nothing could be done with them. 



Where so much is excellent it is difficult to assign comparative 

 rank to the published work ; but perhaps that on the genera of 

 Carabidse, 1881, may be considered the best. It was certainly in 

 some respects the most thorough, the most revolutionary and the 

 most convincing ; for his conclusions have secured practically univer- 

 sal acceptance. His work on the Silphidre in 1880 while not so 

 brilliant, was even a greater tax on his powers, and I am not certain 

 that he did not himself feel most proud of this. 



It would be a serious omission did I fail to call attention to the 

 fact that many of Dr. Horn's papers are fully and carefully illus- 

 trated with drawings from his own pen and pencil. That same 

 faculty that enabled him to seize the important structural facts in an 

 insect seemed to animate his pencil when he sketched them for the 



