THREE EARLY AMERICAN NATURALISTS. 655 



of this country, will probably never be known. The descriptive portion 

 is doubtless the work of Boisduval, and he unquestionably incorporated in 

 the work many observations and illustrations of the earlier stages by Abbot ; 

 but many of the illustrations are certainly the work of Le Conte,* who 

 was only less indus<trious than Abbot in rearing insects because his scien- 

 tific interests extended over a wider field. The internal proof of this is 

 tolerably clear. Abbot's drawings were many times duplicated by him, 

 but a not inconsiderable proportion of the early stages figured in the 

 work of Boisduval and Le Conte are not to be found in the collections of 

 Abbot's drawings cither in London or Boston ; so many indeed that it 

 se(Mns highly probal)le that they are the work of another hand. If we 

 credit these oi- the larger part of them to Le Conte, we shall probably be 

 near the truth. Moreover, some of the drawings that Boisduval showed 

 me in Paris were contained in a little oblong folio volume, on sheets 

 broader than high (27x16.5 cm.), instead of on ordinary large folio 

 sheets as in all the other collections ; now the draw^ings of INfajor Le Conte, 

 recently sold with the library of his son. Dr. John Le Conte, mounted 

 on paper of variable form, were many of them of a shape and size very 

 similar to that of the oblong folio mentioned above ; so that these drawings 

 in Boisduval's hands were perhaps those ofLe Conte himself, and from 

 these in many cases the drawings in Boisduval and Le Conte's w^ork, and 

 some Avhich I have reproduced in this work, were taken. Dr. Le Conte 

 has himself told me that his father had complained of his treatment by 

 Boisduval. 



Major Le Conte's tastes were many-sided, but his special studies, those 

 which were the passion of his life, were in natural history. He was 

 named for his father, John Eatton Le Conte, and was born near Shrews- 

 bury, N. J., February 22, 1784. He graduated at Columbia Col- 

 lege and then joined his brother Lewis in Georgia, and with the latter 

 devoted himself to his favorite pursuits. Most of his life, however, he 

 resided in New York. He was captain, afterward brevet-major, in the 

 corps of topographical engineers from 1818 to 1831. Before he entered 

 the engineer corps, he published a catalogue of the plants of New York 

 City, in the journal edited by Dr. David Hosack, and in subsequent years, 

 during his connection with the army and afterwards, he published special 

 studies on L^tricularia, Gratiola, Ruellia, Tillandsia, Viola and Pancra- 

 tium, as well as on our native grape-vines, tobacco and pecan-nut. He 

 published also a variety of papers on mammals, reptiles, batrachians and 

 Crustacea, mostly of a systematic character, and collected a vast amount 

 of original material for the natural history of our insects. Coleoptera, 

 however, may be said to have been his specialty, particularly in the latter 

 })art of his career, though he published only four papers upon them, and 



*He is credited by Boisduval with only the drawings of the imago of Speyeria idalia. 



