188 Journal Xew York Entomological Society. [VoL xxii. 



had prominence and wealtli before they were driven from France in 

 the seventeenth century. They lost nothing in the Xew World, either 

 in the sugar trade in Martinique or in the great family plantation in 

 Liberty County, Georgia, until the latter was despoiled during the 

 Civil War. Their marriages were as a rule with families of promi- 

 nence. The grandfather of Dr. Leconte married a Miss Eatton, of 

 the family wliich founded h'attontown, X. j. Hence his father's 

 name, John Eatton Leconte. Major Leconte entered the army from 

 pride, not necessity, and retired long before he was forty. He was 

 thirty-seven when he married Miss Lawrence and settled in Xew 

 York City. The two first born of this marriage died in infancy. 

 His wife dying. Major Leconte was left to the solaces of a life-long 

 passionate devotion to natural history and the care of his third son, 

 then only a few months old. For thirty 3-ears the major lived in 

 New York. Day after day he worked over his beetles with a little 

 toddler on his knee. If environment is to count the youngster was 

 bound to be a coleopterist. 



There isjn Philadelphia a family of ])cetle collectors, the grand- 

 father a contemporary of Leconte, the father now owning the bo* 

 private cabinet in that city, and the son an enthusiast, home several 

 times with the spoils of Texas and the far Southwest. I asked this 

 young man : " Do you remember a time when soirte common but 

 handsome species here was new to you and the capture of which 

 gave you a thrill — something like a Prioiius laticollis or the velvet 

 green Chlcciiiiis scricciis or the liig purple Diccclusf " He shook his 

 head. Xo, he knew' all those species by the time when boys of his 

 age were becoming certain of the sequence of letters in the alphabet. 

 He knew the number of tarsal joints when his fellows were learning; 

 to interpret the hands on the' clock face. So with young Leconte. 

 He absorbed beetle knowledge with his primer. He mingled new 

 species with long division. 



He was graduated from St. Mary's College, Maryland, in 1842, 

 then studied in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Xew York. 

 taking his degree of M.D. in 1846. He never practiced prior to 

 1861. How he got his degree in 1846 is hard to understand. He 

 made a journey to the Far West in 1843. In 1844 he visited Lake 

 Superior, working his way along the entire south shore and crossing 

 the country to the sources of the Mississi|)pi River, and this trip wa^ 



