2 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Jan., '92 



lowed the pursuit of his father. As a sculptor he gained a 

 wide and enviable reputation, and he produced many praise- 

 worthy works of art. 



He began in his twelfth year at his work as artist and sculp- 

 tor, and labored hard since. All his literary and scientific 

 labor, the immense correspondence attending the collecting of 

 his butterflies, was done at night, his vocation as sculptor 

 taking up the daylight hours. 



He travelled a great deal, and in 1855-56 visited the West 

 Indies, Mexico and Central America, to examine the old Aztec 

 monuments and add to his collection. 



His father, Ferdinand H. Strecker, was, during a period oi 

 ten years from 1846, a well-known sculptor in Reading. He 

 was a native of Germany, and had a practical experience in 

 the business twenty-six years in Munich, Rome and other 

 large cities in Europe, and in Philadelphia, before he came to 

 Reading. His delicate execution and masterly treatment of 

 marble were remarkable. He had studied ideal sculpture 

 under Antonia Canova, the famous artist and founder of a 

 new school of Italian sculpture, who died in Venice in 1822. 



Mr. Strecker came to America about 1835, and located in 

 Philadelphia, where he carried on business until 1846, when 

 he came to Reading. He died in 1856, and his talented son, 

 Herman Strecker, succeeded him in business. 



Dr. Strecker owned the largest, most valuable, and, in every 

 way, the most remarkable public or private collection of but- 

 terflies and moths on the American continent. 



The Strecker collection comprises over 200,000 specimens, 

 and includes butterflies and moths whose haunts in life are on 

 every portion of the discovered globe, not excepting the regions 

 close to the poles, the hearts of the wildest forests of Africa, 

 India, Australia, South America, the smaller islands of the 

 Indian and Pacific Ocean. 



In consideration of his scientific knowledge, Franklin and 

 Marshall College some years ago conferred upon him the 

 degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 



In his earlier days, during his holiday hours, he made trips 

 to Philadelphia, studied at the Library of the Academy of 



