xn A BIOGRAPniCAL NOTICE OF 



this memoir gives us a complete systematization of the Carahids, 

 which is assuredly the best yet produced on this subject, and which 

 appears to us to merit adoption by all museums and collections, 

 without pausing, perhaps, at some doubtful points of detail — a thing 

 inevitable in such a work, man not being infallible." A dozen pages 

 of extract and technical comment succeed. Then a last one shows 

 more clearly, perhaps, than any of our other citations the impression 

 the work made upon a working Coleopterologist of the time. " The 

 work of M. Horn is much more developed than this synopsis which 

 I have extracted and which is its substance. The characters of each 

 tribe are also given with much elaboration, as well as indications ot 

 the American, and often other, genera that the author refers to tliem 

 with the reasons for so doing. Many of the genera take places quite 

 different from those in which we are accustomed to see them. In 

 the arrangement of the tribes we have already seen that some affini- 

 ties consecrated by an almost general usage are entirely broken. I 

 ought to say with justice, for all those who have looked into the 

 subject know it, that in our classification there were only too many 

 traces of the pitiable study that may be called parish entomology, 

 that is, that the fii"st authors were directed by an insupportable preju- 

 dice that our little Europe was to furnish the exact abridgment of 

 the nature of the globe and the possibility of formulating the system 

 of that nature by it alone. To return to the genera, it is probable 

 that there are some points in their arrangement to be contested. The 

 author, on his side, has perhaps not quite thoroughly studied every- 

 thing that was not at his own door. He has, nevertheless, treated 

 his subject with a breadth of vision which we do not always find in 

 American authors, who also absorb themselves too much in these 

 territorial studies of which I have spoken, studies which, moreover, 

 bear on a territory vaster than our little Europe. But if some 

 traces of this Americanism are found in M. Horn's work, they are 

 quite involuntary I think, and everywhere one reads between the 

 lines the desire to observe, to know, and to regulate for the entire 

 planet. All that is wanting to this work perhaps is to have been 

 preceded by some months' study in the public and private collections 

 of the Old World,* where may be found some scientific treasures 

 which the dollars of the New have not yet transported l)eyond the 

 Atlantic. Still a word, a word of lively approbation. For how 



* Tliis remark seems to indicate tliat M. de Borre did not know of Horn's visit 

 to Europe in 1874. 



