THE INCORPORATORS 1 57 



he published a paper describing over twenty new species of 

 Carabid beetles from the eastern United States. 



His attention was next drawn to certain anomalies of geo- 

 graphical distribution and his extensive studies of the problems 

 resulted in the publication of several important papers on that 

 general subject. Dr. LeConte's father had made the Coleoptera 

 his favorite study and had also published papers on mammals, 

 reptiles, batrachians, and crustaceans. He had collected a large 

 amount of material relating to the natural history of our insects, 

 and made a series of water-color illustrations of them and also 

 of plants. The son carried on the work thus begun, and during 

 his lifetime published more than 60 monographic essays — some 

 of them large works — on the Coleoptera and other groups of 

 insects, investigating as far as practicable all the various 

 phenomena connected with their life-histories. He devoted 

 himself especially to systematic work, in a manner new in 

 America in his time, defining more than 1,100 of the higher 

 groups, and forming nearly 250 synoptic or analytic tables. 

 Half of the Coleoptera of the United States were described by 

 him for the first time. So extensive and important was his work 

 that he may with safety be called the greatest of American ento- 

 mologists. That he was so regarded abroad is evidenced by the 

 fact that he became an honorary member in all the older and 

 larger entomological societies of Europe. 



In 1861, as the result of many years of systematic study of 

 American beetles, he published the first part of a classification 

 of the Coleoptera of North America, the second part appearing 

 the following year, and in 1873, a third part of the same work. 

 In the meantime, he had reached the conclusion that the 

 Rhynchophora, or weevils, represented a quite distinct group 

 of Coleoptera, and in 1876, in association with Dr. Horn, his 

 former pupil, he published a thorough monographic revision of 

 this group, which completely revolutionized the accepted classi- 

 fication of the day. Finally, in 1883, a few months before his 

 death, he published (also with Dr. Horn as joint author) a new 



