12 The Pennsylvania-German Society. 



flora, fauna, minerals and rocks have been more thor- 

 oughly studied than those of Lancaster,as can be shown 

 by the collections of the Linnaean Society and its 

 records published in the History of the Rev. Dr. 

 Mombert. Now, the men who accomplished all this 

 were of the native German stock, and amongst them, 

 Simon S. Rath von, will long be held in high esteem 

 for services done in those branches of entomology to 

 which he devoted special attention. 



Born also in Lancaster county, where his life was 

 spent, and a scion of the same stock, ever proud of 

 his descent, was the brilliant, witty and genial Pro- 

 fessor Samuel Stehman Haldeman, one of the most 

 industrious, original and profound scholars of the 

 century. He began his career as a naturalist and 

 published a work on our "Fresh-water Shells," now 

 out of print and much sought after, but soon passed 

 over to linguistic and philological studies in which he 

 achieved great distinction, both at home and abroad. 

 Agassiz said of him, "That man Haldeman has an 

 idea behind every word that he utters," and Dr. 

 Francis A. March has written of him, "Professor 

 Haldeman was in early life a naturalist and by his 

 mental constitution a scientist, and he took hold of 

 the forms of speech in the same spirit," and "we 

 shall never look upon his like again."* 

 j Another Lancaster-county naturalist of German 

 descent who deserves notice is Abram Paschal Gar- 



*There is an interesting memoir of this distinguished man, by Charles 

 Henry Hart, in the Penn Monthly of iSSi, but what is needed is a full 

 biography for which abundant material could be supplied by his family. 



