XVlll A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF 



of Philadelphia March 11, 1861, "called the attention of the mem- 

 bei's to the necessity of collecting the larv?e of insects, as the study 

 of that portion of Entomology was of vast importance to the scien- 

 tific world" (Proc. Ent. Soc. Phila., i, p. 2.). Twenty-seven years later 

 he wrote:"''' "The larvae of Coleoptera will doubtless yield facts 

 of taxonomic value, and may aid in settling disputed relationships 

 among the imagines. ... At present too little attention seems to 

 be paid to study of this sort, and every student of classification 

 should consider it a duty to describe any authentic larva known to 

 him with such figures of form and detail as may be useful hei'eafter." 



A remark bearing on the inheritance of acquired characters occurs 

 in a passage treating of the absence of the tarsi in the fossorial 

 Ateuchus, DeltochUum and Phanceus : " It is evident that some other 

 cause than inherited mutilation must be sought for to explain the 

 loss of the tarsi in these insects."^''*" 



Dr. Horn was disinclined to long and continued argument. From 

 remarks which he made at times in conversation, he was evidently 

 influenced in this regard by the example of Henry Walter Bates, 

 the naturalist of the Amazons, whom he knew and esteemed highly. 

 His attitude is expressed in his own words in a brief statement con- 

 cerning the anomalous Lower Californian (Joleopter Vesperoctenus 

 Jiohri: " I do not propose to continue any argument, having said 

 all that I deem necessary on my own part, and will leave to others 

 the adoption of either view."^^'* And again, "No literary work is 

 more distasteful to me than controversy, especially when there is a 

 personal element."-'^ Yet he did engage in argument when he be- 

 lieved that one side of a case had not received its due, or that some 

 principle, T)ther than the scientific issue, was concerned. His papers 

 on Vesperoctenus and Pleocoma ''* are examples of the first of these 

 beliefs, the privately-published " Reply to Dr. C. V. Riley" "^ illus- 

 trates the second. The prefatory ren}arks to the last-mentioned give 

 another glimpse of his character in the words : •' In publishing my 

 reply to Dr. Riley privately I wish to express my disapproval of the 

 use of the pages of scientific periodicals for the ventilation of per- 

 sonal grievances to the exclusion of more useful matter." 



One charge brought against him, however, never failed to arouse 

 his resentment, and this also he has expressed in the paper on Ves- 

 peroctenus : " My principal ol)ject in writing these lines is to object 

 to a method of argument on jNIr. Gahan's j)art, and it is not the first 

 time that tlie method has been used by my English friends in argu- 



