THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 345 



Entomologists of our earlier days, including the author himself^ bring back 

 the past very vividly and recall many events that had almost passed into 

 oblivion. 



The Baron divides the record of his life into three periods, each of 

 almost equal length. He was born in St. Petersburg, on the 21st of 

 August, 1S28, and began to take an interest in entomology at the early 

 age of eleven. When twenty-one he entered into the service of the 

 Imperial Foreign Office. During this period he collected all orders of 

 insects except Lepidoptera, and published two papers on Tipulidae, 

 and a pamphlet of 166 pages, in Russian, contained a general survey of 

 the insect fauna of the environs of St. Petersburg. 



The second period of his career embraces the twenty-one years spent 

 in the United States (1856-1877), during which he was Secretary of the 

 Russian Legation, and afterwards Consul General of Russia in New York. 

 In 1871 he resigned his official position and made several visits to 

 Europe ; for the last four years he lived as a private citizen in the United 

 States. This was the period of his greatest scientific activity, and was 

 made memorable by the preparation and publication of his well-known 

 works on North American Diptera, which paved the way for all 

 subsequent students of this order. 



A great part of his time, he tells us, was taken up •' in acting as a 

 purveyor of material for Dr. H. Loew to work upon, and as a translator 

 and editor of his manuscripts," which were published by the Smithsonian 

 Institution. These volumes evidently owe a great deal of their value to 

 Baron Osten Sacken's careful work, without which, indeed, they could 

 never have been fitted for publication. His own earliest work in America 

 was his Catalogue of the described Diptera, which was published by the 

 Smithsonian Institution in 1858, and was the third of its long series of 

 entomological works, which liave been such a priceless boon to all 

 students in this department of national science. Twenty years later, 

 after doing more than any other person to advance the knowledge of 

 North American Diptera by his collections, researches and publications, 

 he concluded his labours on this side of the Atlantic by the issue of a 

 second Catalogue, a critical one, of the order ; this also was published by 

 the same Institution. 



The third period of his life, which, we trust, may not be closed for 

 many years to come, has been spent almost entirely at Heidelberg, in 

 Germany. His first proceeding was to go to Guben, the residence of 



