completed his first semester of high school, the family 

 relocated to St. Louis, where he had to go to work and 

 elp provide support. Thus, his formal schooling ended 

 early. The depression years came. Leslie moved from 

 temporary job to temporary job as did most who survived 

 that bleak episode in our nation's history. 



A highlight in his life was the Webster Groves Na- 

 ture Society, a group of amateur naturalists and some 

 colleagues from local universities and the Missouri Bo- 

 tanical Garden. Such eventually famous naturalists as 

 Ralph Swain the entomologist, Richard Grossenheider 

 the mammalogist, Julian Steyermark who later worked 

 as a botanist at Field Museum in the 1940s and 1950s, 

 and Phil Rau of insect behavior fame, were at the start of 

 careers. They interacted with Hubricht and encouraged 

 his interests. 



Because caves were common in the St. Louis area 

 and little studied, he began exploration alone and with 

 others, collecting isopods, amphipods, insects, and even 

 snails. Specimens were sent to busy authorities for iden- 

 tifications, often languishing on cluttered desks for long 

 periods. A critical turning point came when Edgar 

 Anderson, the famous geneticist, arrived at the Missouri 

 Botanical Garden and hired Hubricht as his research 

 assistant. Joint field trips, coauthored papers, and a hap- 

 py 7 '/2-year association lasted until 1943. Anderson then 

 went to Mexico for studies on Indian corn, and Hubricht 

 was jobless. Rejected for military service, his scientific 

 outlook molded by his interactions in St. Louis, a turn- 

 ing point in his life was at hand. About 1940 he had been 

 offered a scholarship at the University of Chicago, de- 

 spite his lack of a high school diploma. Having seen the 

 underside of faculty life, and not wishing to teach, he 

 had turned down this chance for an academic career. 



By 1943 he had written or coauthored 24 scientific 

 papers, mostly on botany, isopods, amphipods, cave life, 

 but some notes on freshwater and land snails. His collec- 

 tion of shells became substantial. The first catalog entry 

 was for Rabdotus decdbatus ozarkensis, an endemic Mis- 

 souri subspecies, collected April 21, 1929. By 1943 there 

 were 7,000 entries. He then made a critical choice, 

 applying for a job with Remington Rand as a tabulating 

 machine mechanic. Later he was to service UNIVAC 

 computers. He remained with Remington Rand through 

 its change into UNIVAC until his retirement in Febru- 

 ary 1973. 



He took initial tabulating machine training in II- 



ion, New York, then was posted to Norfolk, Virginia 



until the end of 1945. This was followed by short periods 



in Detroit, Battle Creek, and Dallas. In May 1948 he was 



24 shifted to Danville, Virginia, where he remained for 7'/2 



years. Pilsbry's monumental land snail monograph at last 

 was completed, and the thousands of distributional rec- 

 ords had been transferred onto Hubricht's maps. 



Although Hubricht had described his first land 

 snail species in 1938, Anguispira rugoderma from Pine 

 Mountain, Kentucky, and published a number of scien- 

 tific papers prior to 1943, there was a gap in his publish- 

 ing activity — but not his collectings — from 1943 to 1949. 

 In part, this was because he was living in and collecting 

 from regions where only known species of land snails 

 occurred. In part he was waiting for Pilsbry to summarize 

 current knowledge. Until that happened, the only 

 identification book available to him had been published 

 in 1885 (W. J. Binney's A Manual of American Land 

 Shells, Bulletin 28, United States National Museum), 

 which was hopelessly out of date in the 1940s. In part he 

 was honing his knowledge of land snails, beginning to 

 study their anatomy, becoming focused on their ecology. 



Things came together for Hubricht in the late 

 1940s. He was located in Danville, Virginia with con- 

 venient access to rich snail country — the Appalachian 

 and Piedmont areas. Pilsbry had completed his summary 

 work. If a land snail species was known, Pilsbry had dis- 

 cussed and figured it. If the land snail was a new species, 

 Hubricht could recognize this fact — and describe it. 

 Then came the happy and productive years. Collecting 

 every weekend, vacation trips to even more interesting 

 areas. Gleefully accepting, as a troubleshooter, offers of 

 transfer by UNIVAC to Iowa in 1956; two years in Lare- 

 do, Texas; up to Louisville, Kentucky; brief periods in 

 Memphis, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi; Montgom- 

 ery, Ozark, and Mobile, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida; 

 Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta, Georgia; and then to 

 Meridian, Mississippi in 1961. Each stay allowed him to 

 survey and collect snails from a new area. His collection 

 grew at rate of 2,000 lots of land snails annually. 



And not only snails. He has sent more than 200 

 new species of millipedes to Richard L. Hoffman. On 

 April 9, 1960, he found in Butler County, Alabama — to 

 the amazement and chagrin of salamander specialists — a 

 new genus of salamander, named Phaeognathus hubrichti 

 Highton. This is only one of the 3 plants and 26 ani - 

 mals named after him by other scientists. 



His own contributions have been prodigious. To 

 date, 81 of the 523 land snail species from Eastern North 

 America have been described by Leslie Hubricht, with 

 the 20+ "need more material" species still to come. 

 Only Henry A. Pilsbry, with 79 species described as sole 

 author and 12 more with coauthors, exceeds Hubricht's 

 contribution. Thomas Say, founder of American en- 

 tomology and malacology in the early 1800s, is a dis- 



