Sept, 1914-] DOVV : ThE GREATEST COLEOPTERIST. 187 



ordinary industry, into whose hands they chance to fall, descrihes 

 them, and acquires great praise for doing that which he ought not 

 to have a chance of doing. Can it be wondered at that there is so 

 much confusion about the synonymy of our species, when they are 

 published in every country of the globe, but that in which they ought 

 to be published? " 



The presumptuousness of this interpolation is not what is expected 

 from a youth of nineteen. It is a challenge, the outcome of which 

 can only be ridiculous failure or preeminent success. Neither is the 

 vigorous, trained use of language the usual accompaniment of the 

 student period of life. In our day of too extreme, too early special- 

 ization the curriculum of elementals is unduly neglected. Balanced, 

 forceful, faultless English is rare and nowhere rarer than in science. 



From the date of his first paper thirty-nine years of life were 

 given to John Lawrence Leconte, four of which were devoted to his 

 country and four more to an invalid wife, eight in all during which 

 entomology occupied only odd hours. When he began there were not 

 five genuine entomologists in the country. The president of the 

 Philadelphia Academy of Sciences wrote in 1842 that '' there is not 

 one entomologist in our number."' When Leconte finished Phila- 

 delphia was the home of the science. Leconte described 4.734 species 

 of beetles, nine times as many as any predecessor. Many dropped 

 into the synonymv, but present research is restoring them con- 

 stantly, notably among those which he himself suppressed.^ He, 

 with a pupil, gave to the world a division of the Rhynchophora in 

 which every basic fact was a new discovery. To crown all, in the 

 last year of his life he and that pupil produced a generic classification 

 of the Coleoptera which superseded every European work and which, 

 while out of print, is far from obsolete. Modern science is arriving 

 at its major classification by a different route, but arriving at sub- 

 stantially the same conclusions. Moreover, by Leconte's example and 

 direct influence entomological societies sprang up all over the land. 

 He was a man of enormous power of attraction, few jealousies and 

 fewer enemies. 



John Lawrence Leconte was born in New York City, May 13, 

 1825. The Lecontes were a Hugenot family, as were the Says and 

 Chaudoirs, who contributed immortal names to coleopterology. They 

 1 Compare Thos. L. Casey Memoirs IV, p. 220, sub Brachysomida. 



