562 ^ century of progress in the natural sciences 



American Coleopterology in the Last Hundred Years 



American coleopterology first developed in the area between Washington and 

 Boston. Say's contacts were with Dejean in Paris, and, later, LeConte and Horn 

 were in touch with colleagues in both France and Germany. The history of the 

 study of beetles in America was conditioned primarily by the vast hinterland 

 which lay just beyond the Appalachian Mountains and which by 1850 extended 

 without political or linguistic barrier all the way to the Pacific Ocean. 



If the situation had been different — if the Americans had been firmly hemmed 

 in to their north Atlantic homeland or if they had been broken into several lin- 

 guistic groups — ^American coleopterology might well have developed in accord- 

 ance with the European pattern of increasingly detailed studies of restricted 

 regions. Harris' 1833 list of the beetles of Massachusetts might well have de- 

 veloped into a Massachusetts or a New England fauna. 



But the spell of a continent proved too strong. On the one hand, it gave a 

 practical turn to the American mind which allowed but slight attention to such 

 an esoteric pursuit as the study of beetles. On the other hand, it meant that such 

 coleopterists as did appear were completely absorbed in analyzing the fauna of 

 an entire continent. They had no energies either for the detailed local studies so 

 conspicuous on the European scene or for the world studies which likewise, from 

 the beginning, attracted the attention of the Europeans. The literature which 

 did emerge took the form, almost exclusively, of technical monographs, conti- 

 nental in scope, with the result that not many persons were attracted to the 

 study and that American coleopterology has remained the pursuit of a few pro- 

 fessional entomologists. 



The father of American coleopterology was John Lawrence LeConte, ]\I.D. 

 (b. 1825, d. 1883), of New York and Philadelphia. A man of independent means, 

 LeConte between 1844 and 1884 described 4,816 species of beetles in nearly all 

 families, of which 864 were considered synonyms in 1881. Moreover, as a rule, 

 LeConte's species were not announced in isolated publication but in mono- 

 graphs which treated the whole continent. LeConte accompanied Louis Agassiz 

 to Lake Superior in 1849. In 1850 and 1851 he was collecting in California and 

 the Southwest, and in 1869 to 1872 he visited Europe, studying Kirby and 

 Walker types in the British Museum and visiting Continental coleopterists. 



In 1853 LeConte joined with F. E. Melsheimer (b. 1782, d. 1873) and S. S. 

 Haldeman (b. 1812, d. 1880) of Pennsylvania in producing a Catalogue of the 

 Described Coleoptera of the United States, listing 4,750 species. In 1859 he 

 edited a collected edition of The Complete Writings of Thomas Say on the Ento- 

 mology of North America, with accompanying commentary. Since Say's col- 

 lections had not been preserved, it was necessary to come to some understand- 

 ing of his species as a basis for further studies. In 1861-1862 LeConte published 

 Part I of a Classification of the Coleoptera of North America, giving the generic 

 classification of the families except Coccinellidae, Phytophaga, and Rhyncho- 

 phora. Part II, on Cerambycidae, appeared in 1873, but the completed work, by 

 then revised, did not appear until a few months before LeConte's death in 1883, 

 and then in collaboration with George H. Horn. 



LeConte's collection went to Agassiz' Museum of Comparative Zoology at 

 Harvard. Of the 9,100 or 9,200 species of North American beetles known at the 



