178 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Before Linell's entrance into this office very little work had been 

 done in arranging the vast material of insects at the Museum, 

 excepting the Lepidoptera, which had been for some time in the 

 charge of Mr. J. B. Smith. In bringing order in the collection, 

 Linell's remarkable qualities as a working entomologist were 

 clearly brought out. Hitherto only occupied with Coleoptera, he 

 was able, within an incredibly short time, to master the intricacies 

 of the classification of other orders so that in the course of a few 

 years he managed to bring order into the entire collection. Very 

 few persons are aware of the enormous amount of work ac 

 complished single-handed by Mr. Linell, work of a most thank 

 less nature, which left him no time to publish anything for 

 himself. However, when the Department of Insects was placed 

 under the curatorship of Dr. L. O. Howard, a better time dawned 

 for Linell, since, by the employment of assistants, he was relieved, 

 to some degree, of the tedious manual work which is inseparable 

 from the maintenance of a large collection of insects. He now 

 found time to return to the study of his favorite order, the Cole 

 optera, and commenced to publish papers which in quality are 

 certainly above the average work done in descriptive entomology. 

 But he enjoyed this most happy period of his life only for a short 

 time, and on May 3, 1897, he died suddenly of heart failure. 

 After years of toil for others, he was just entering upon systematic 

 work for himself, when death came. The last few papers illus 

 trate his rare ability and judgment as a systematist, and had his 

 life been spared he would doubtless have soon stood well up in 

 the ranks of the world's Coleopterists. 



Mr. Linell was not only well versed in the broad field of gen 

 eral science, but was also remarkably proficient in many European 

 languages. His knowledge of the Scandinavian languages was 

 freely given to many of his co-workers in science. 



Personally, Mr. Linell was quiet and retiring ; absorbed in his 

 chosen field of Nature, he found little time for amusement or 

 society. He was wholly unselfish, and gave much to others, in 

 time, knowledge, and direct scientific work. So patient was he 

 that the daily routine of museum work was performed with a faith 

 fulness rarely equalled. 



The posthumous paper printed below includes all of the un 

 published descriptions left by Mr. Linell and which were found 



