on. JOHN L. LECONTE. XIU 



sprang was aiiiiouiK'ed years previous, alldwint:- tivfjiK'iit opportuiiitit-s to 

 test the value of the proposed elianges. It was a bold stroke, as Dr. 

 Horn has pt)iuted out. and it could not be expected that acceptance 

 would at once be gained. The more closely it is examined the more 

 rational does it appear, and we do not believe the day far distant when 

 this as well as previous changes introduced by Dr. LeConte will find 

 general acceptance. 



The other work to which we referred, and which appeared only a few 

 months before his death, was founded upon an uncompleted work wliich 

 the Smithsonian Institution publislied in lS(i]. wholly his own, and which 

 ])lanned to give a general and systematic survey of all the genera and 

 higher groups of North American Coleoptera. This first part included 

 all the Isomera, excepting the Phytophaga, and was followed in the suc- 

 ceeding year by the Heteromera, the Phytopliaga, generally classed in 

 close proximity to the Rhyncophora, being still left untouched. When, 

 in 18()7, he had concluded on the absolute separation of the Rhynco- 

 phora from the other series of Coleoptera, he was free to carry out his 

 unfinished work, and, in 1873, Crotch being then engaged in publishing 

 a rapid series of synopses of the genera of our Chrysomelidae, and Horn 

 investigating the le.sser family Bruchidae, LeConte took the remaining 

 family, Cerambycidte in liand, and published a third instalment of his 

 classification. From this time until the monograph of Rhyncophora ap- 

 peared, lie was enga'ged in the elaboration of that work. And now 

 nothing remained but to complete the task to which he had pledged him- 

 self nearly a score of years before. To produce a homogeneous work, 

 however, it was still necessary not only to revise much that had already 

 been done, in the light of new material and the later investigations of 

 others, but to break new ground as well over the fields as yet compara- 

 tively untrodden. 



A sense, however, of less enduring powers of work and the assistance 

 of which he gladly availed himself, which his colleague and former pupil, 

 Dr. Horn, had rendered with such excellent results in the monograph of 

 the Rhyncophora, led him to solicit anew the co-operation of Dr. Horn 

 in the preparation of the monographic essays upon whose foundation it 

 should rest, ■■ hoping thereby to lighten his own labor and prepare the 

 work in a shorter time." How zealously Dr. Horn advanced to this 

 work his own thorough treatises, following rapidly one after the other, is 

 sufficient proof ; they are evidences not only of his industry and acumen, 

 but of his loyalty to his friend, and of the heartiness ol' his co-operation. 



(4) AUGUST, 1884. 



