34 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [February, 



are separated by an interval of sixty-nine years ; his political 

 services covered fifty-eight. Our interest in him is chiefly 

 entomological; he was the " Maitre de I'Odonatologie," the 

 " Altmeister," the chief systematist in this field who has yet 

 appeared. 



Michel Edmond, Baron de Selys-Longchamps was born 

 in Paris, May 25, 1813, and died at Iviege, Belgium, December 

 II, 1900. He studied in the University of Liege, and early 

 took up his residence at Longchamps, near Waremme, fifteen 

 miles westward. In 1841 he became communal councillor of 

 Waremme, was provincial councillor of the same canton from 

 1846 to 1848, member of the Chamber of Representatives for 

 Waremme in 1848, elected to the national Senate for that 

 arrondissement, February 13, 1855, and held the seat until his 

 refusal to accept a new term at the general election of May, 

 1900. In 1879, the Senate elected him Vice-president, and on 

 August 3, 1880, its President ; he left the chair in 1884. He 

 had also been President of 1' Association liberale de Waremme, 

 and Envoy Extraordinary to the court of Italy. In his letters 

 he frequently referred to the great amount of time consumed 

 by his senatorial duties. His resignation of them, he wTote to 

 an American correspondent, was due to 



" my age ; the precautions for tny health on account of the frequent resi- 

 dence in Brussels during the bad season in winter ; the desire to live in 

 my family for the few years that remain to me ; and above all to enjoy a 

 little liberty which will permit me to work at nos chers Odonates, on which 

 I am very much behindhand on account of the Senate" (letter of June 8, 

 1900). 



His first publication on natural history w^as a few pages de- 

 voted to the birds and insects of the province of Liege in the Dic- 

 tioyinaire geographique oi that province by Ph. van der Maelen, 

 Brussels, 1831. This was at the same time his first essay on 

 the Odonata, followed in later years by some 114 others to the 

 very December that saw his death. These memoirs and notes, 

 for they are of very varying length, seem naturally to fall into 

 three groups which, to a certain degree, are also chronological. 



The first group deals almost exclusively with the European 



