PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



VOL. 21 MARCH, 1919 No. :i 



FREDERICK KNAB. 



BY A. N. CAUDELL, A. BUSCK, AND L. O. HOWARD. 



We record with sorrow the loss of our distinguished fellow 

 member, and vice-president of our Society, Frederick Knab, 

 who died in Washington, D. C., November 2, 1918, after a pro- 

 longed and painful decline. 



Mr. Knab was born September 22, 1865, in Wurzburg, Bavaria 

 and came to the United States as a boy of eight with his parents, 

 Oscar and Josephine Knab, who settled in Chicopee, Massachu- 

 setts in 1873. The father was an engraver and painter, and an 

 uncle was court artist to the King of Bavaria. Frederick partook 

 of the artistic temperament of his family and even as a boy de- 

 voted himself to painting. In 1889 he went to Europe and 

 studied art for two years at the Munich Academy, and on his 

 return to Massachusetts he established a studio in Chicopee 

 and for a series of years made landscape painting his profession. 

 Long before this, however, he had been interested in Natural 

 vScience, and especially in Entomology. As a boy he had studied 

 the classics of Zoology, such as the works of Darwin, Wallace,, 

 and Bates, and had accumulated a large collection of insects, 

 the biology of the Coleoptera attracting him particularly. He 

 was an active member of the Springfield Zoological Club and a 

 valued correspondent of several of our Coleopterists. 



Prompted by his interest in Zoology Mr. Knab undertook 

 in 1885-86 a sixteen months' collecting trip up the Amazon River, 

 traveling form its mouth to Peru. Although the results of this 

 expedition were published only in local newspapers, it was an event 

 of great and lasting importance to Mr. Knab, as his natural bent 

 for Entomology and his keen powers of obervation made this 

 travel in the tropics a constant source of information in his later 

 scientific career. 



In 1903 the first grant by the Carnegie Institution of Washing- 

 ton for the purpose of a monograph of the mosquitoes of North 

 and Central America and the West Indies was made, and in or- 

 ganizing the work Doctor Howard sought the advice of Mr. 

 George Dimmock of Springfield (who in his earlier years had done 



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