UK. .JOHN I,. LECONTE. IX 



iii:iiniii:il.s. reptiles, batrueliiiiiis aiul cni.stacca. uiDstly of a sy.steiuatie 

 eliaracter. and collected a vast amount of ori;^i rial material for the natural 

 history of our insects, as may be seen by a single instalment that was 

 published in Paris in conjunction with Boisduval upon Xorth American 

 Butterflies. Coleoptera, however, may be said to have been his sp(H;ialty, 

 particularly in the latter part of his career, thoujih he published only four 

 papers upon them, and mainly upon a single family, — Ilisteridae. He 

 not only amassed a considerable collection, but he left behind a mo.st ex- 

 tensive series of water-color illustrations of our native insects and ])lants 

 made with liis own hands. It was natural, then, that his only child, 

 upon whom he spent all his devotion, and whose mother had died when 

 he was only a few weeks old, .should share in these tastes of ms father 

 and almost sole companion. 



Coming from such a stock it is not sur{)rising that a decided taste for 

 natural history, and even for the special branch Entomology, in which 

 he was engaged during an active life, should appear in the early youth of 

 Dr. LeConte. He himself told how strong was his early passion while 

 still at Mt. St. Mary's College. That it soon took the definite form of 

 investigation is shown by the fact that while a medical student, at the 

 early age of nineteen, he published his first paper containing descriptions 

 of twenty odd species of Carabidae from the eastern United States. 



As must be the case with an intelligent student engaged in any branch 

 of systematic zoology, his attention was quickly drawn to anomalies of 

 geographical distribution, and we accordingly find him in one of liis early 

 papers drawing attention to several species of Coleoptera common to 

 the North American and European continents, who.sc distribution could 

 nor ))e attributed to commerce, and in a brit'f but pregnant essay on the 

 geographical distribution of Coleoptera in the northern part of our con- 

 tinent appended to his contribution to Agassiz's Lake Superior distin- 

 gui.shing " the different kinds of replacement of species which are ob- 

 served in passing from one zoological district to another." and nicely 

 defining the distinction between •• analogous" and " ecjuivalent" species. 

 " The prevailing character of tropical faunas," he says, '' is individuality ; 

 the production of peculiar forms within limited regions ; while the dis- 

 tinguishing feature of temperate and arctic faunas is the repetition of 

 similar or identical forms through extensive localities." Such passages, 

 written thirty-five years ago, mean far more than if first published now, 

 and disclose a mind quick to grasp generalities, fertile in ideas, terse and 

 discriminating in expre.-^sion. 



(3) AUGTST, 1SS4. 



