JOURNAL 



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Vol. XXII. SEPTEMBER, 1914. No. 3. 



THE GREATEST COLEOPTERIST. 



By R. p. Dow, 



Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Of all the papers dealing with American Coleopterology far the 

 most important is probably that listed as No. 3 in Henshaw's Bibli- 

 ography of Leconte, published in the Boston Journal of Natural His- 

 tory, Vol. V, pp. 203-209, and entitled: "Descriptions of Some New 

 and Interesting Insects Inhabiting the United States. By John L. 

 Leconte. Read before the Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., November 6, 

 1844." It is, in fact, in matters entomological the American Declara- 

 tion of Independence. Previously scattering species had been re- 

 corded by Harris, Ziegler, Hentz, Randall, Leconte, the elder, and 

 during a few years one Thomas Say had violated all precedent by 

 describing his own discoveries without reference to Europe, about 

 800 species of beetles and rather more in other orders, but this revolu- 

 tionist had died young after nine years of unhappy expatriation in the 

 wilderness of Indiana, where literature was not. Following his de- 

 parture the science languished, utterly neglected in New York and 

 Philadelphia, kept alive by a small band in Boston and a handful of 

 local collectors scattered over the country. 



One would like to imagine that this paper met with the reception 

 it deserved, that to the faithful score of those who might attend Dr. 

 Harris had passed around the word that a paper, quite out of the 

 ordinary, would be presented, and that the author, a son of his old 

 friend, IMajor Leconte, a recent graduate of St. ]\Iary's College was 



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