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Leconte, the results of his forty years' study of that group. He 

 was emphatically the authority on American Coleoptera ; and 

 his death, which occurred on the 15th November, 1883, leaves a 

 blank which his countrymen will find it difficult to fill. His 

 collection will have a fitting resting-place in the Museum at 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts. 



Philipp Christoph Zeller was born at Steinheim-on-the- 

 Murr, in Wurtemberg, on the 9th April, 1808, but in his infancy 

 he was taken to Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where in very early 

 youth he appears to have acquired a love for Lepidoptera ; at 

 the age of fifteen he began to keep a lepidopterological journal, 

 but it was not until he went to the University of Berlin that he 

 had any instruction in Natural History. Having graduated at 

 Berlin, he returned to Frankfort-on-the-Oder in 1830, and began 

 to devote his leisure to Botany and Entomology, his chief 

 attention being at this time given to Coleoptera and Diptera, to 

 the writers on which Orders, and especially to the dipterologist 

 Meigen, Zeller was wont to attribute any benefit which he derived 

 from the study of other entomological authors. But in 1833 he 

 made the acquaintance of Fischer von Koslerstamm, and resumed 

 the Lepidoptera as his favourite group. Having married, and 

 adopted tuition as his profession, we find him in 1835 Oberlehrer 

 at the Town School of Gross-Glogau, in Silesia, and in 1852 his 

 educational services were specially recognised by the King of 

 Prussia conferring upon him the title of Professor ; in 1860 he 

 removed to Meseritz, in Posen, where he continued his professorial 

 duties until 1866, when he retired on a government pension; 

 from 1869 till his death he lived near Stettin, and died suddenly 

 at Griinhof on the 27th March, 1883. His collection has been 

 purchased by Lord Walsingham. 



The editor of Oken's ' Isis ' had offered a prize for the best essay 

 on the determination of the Lepidoptera mentioned in Beaumur's 

 " Memoires'; and the prize was awarded to Zeller, whose "Kritische 

 Bestimmung der in Keaumur's Memoiren vorkommenden Lepi- 

 dopteren " was published in the ' Isis ' for 1838; and in the volume 

 of the same work for the following year appeared the " Versuch 

 einer naturgemassen Eintheilung der Schaben," which by its 

 masterly treatment of the Crambina and Tineina at once stamped 

 its author as a man of mark. His contributions to the ' Isis ' con- 

 tinued until the cessation of that publication in the troublous days 



