224 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [September, 



angle with the inner margin and the denser irrorations below are 

 distinctive. The dark shade on secondaries above is far from 

 prominent, the impression conveyed without closer examination 

 being that the wings are, without markings, a brilliant blue. 



OBITUARY. 



Mr. John B. Lembert was lately found murdered in his lonely cabin 

 on the Merced River in California. 



"There is no more enchanting mountain valley in California than the 

 Tuolumne meadows, 9000 feet above the level of the sea. It was here 

 that Lembert built his cabin and staked off a quarter section in the center 

 of the valley, on the margin of the grass, and a matter of seventy-five 

 yards from the fine soda spring which all travelers remember, some with 

 pleasant thoughts, others with wry faces. Who he was or where he came 

 from I do not know. I have asked these questions of many persons who 

 were acquainted with him — some as intimately as it was possible to be- 

 come with John Lembert— but evidently he had never told them. 



" In the summer and until late in the fall the Tuolumne meadows are a 

 paradise. Save for an occasional storm, which is over in no time, it is 

 one long spring day. Birds and bees and butterflies and myriads of in- 

 sects — some not altogether welcome — make their home here, and many 

 kinds of flowers bloom in succession, not only in the meadow, but through 

 the forest and on the loftiest crags. Here the old man lived alone, eating 

 enough to sustain life and studying the fauna and flora. When his money 

 ran low — and he never had much — he would catch some butterflies, rare 

 in other altitudes, and send them "below" to Eastern museums, to 

 Berkeley and later to Stanford. He got little for these specimens, but 

 Lembert could live on almost nothing. 



" He was a fair all-round naturalist, but entomology was his specialty, 

 and butterflies his. passion. Some of these have been named after him. 

 He possessed many of the standard works on these subjects, and also 

 some general literature, but in the latter he had evidently exhausted his 

 interest by frequent perusal, for he became intoxicated with delight on 

 occasionally being given books or magazines by visitors to the meadows. 

 In recent years many of the university students stopping at the soda 

 spring donated him what readmg matter they might happen to have with 

 them, and afterward sent him more from the Yosemite or from their 

 homes. He was a man evidently of some attainments. His language 

 was faultless, and his command of Latin — of which he seemed somewhat 

 proud — indicated a thorough classical education." 



The theory has been advanced that Lembert was murdered by the 

 Yosemite Indians in revenge for the desecration of their ancient graves 

 while in search for ethnological material for the Smithsonian Institution. 

 He was well known to Eastern entomo ogists, especially those interested 

 in Lepidoptera, to whom he sent many rare species. 



Entomological News for June was mailed May 28, i8g6. 



