MEMOIR. XXm 



In spite of the closing sentence of this letter, it appears 

 that the books and cabinet of Professor Plentz were finally 

 paid for (the price being $1,350), though mainly through the 

 personal efforts of Dr. Harris. Professor Plentz was of French 

 birth, but American by adoption, and it is surprising to find 

 that his name does not occur in our encyclopedias, except in 

 connection with his wife, well known as a novelist. He has 

 not even the meagre mention which these works assign to 

 those other pioneers of American entomology, Say and the 

 elder Leconte. They, with Melsheimer, were the early com- 

 peers of Dr. Harris, whether they were or were not his 

 peers ; while his chief aid in collecting seems to have come 

 from his friend and classmate. Rev. L. W. Leonard, of Dub- 

 lin, N. H. In truth, the number who seriously applied them- 

 selves to this science, in those days, might almost have been 

 counted on one's fingers. His foreign correspondence, when 

 it came, gave more substantial assistance, and I especially 

 remember the zeal aroused in Cambridge by the visit of Mr. 

 Edward Doubleday. 



Yet the society of accomplished foreign naturalists perhaps 

 made Dr. Harris feel his own loneliness the more. He writes 

 (Sept. 23, 1839) to Mr. Doubleday: 



"You have never, and can never know Avhat it is to be alone in your pur- 

 suits, to want the sympathy and the aid and counsel of kindred spirits ; you 

 are not compelled to pursue science as it were by stealth, and to feel all the 

 time, while so employed, that you are exposing yourself, if discovered, to 

 thg ridicule, perhaps, at least to the contempt, of those who cannot perceive 

 in such pursuits any practical and useful results. But such has been my 

 lot, — and you can therefore form some idea how grateful to my feelings must 

 be the privilege of an interchange of views and communication with the 

 more favored votaries of science in another land." 



