XLbomas Xiucolu Case^ jfun& 



THOMAS LINCOLN CASEY AND THE CASEY COLLEC- 

 TION OF COLEOPTERA 



By L. L. BUCHANAN ' 



Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



(With One Plate) 



Thomas Lincoln Casey was both soldier and man of science. Seldom 

 does one lifetime present substantial and valued achievement in two 

 fields as widely separated as were the two provinces of this coleopterist 

 who was also an army engineer. 



Born in 1857 at West Point, he was the son of Brig. -Gen. Thomas 

 Lincoln Casey, who as Chief of Engineers of the United States Army 

 was to carry through the construction of the Congressional Library 

 building, and of the upper part of the Washington Monument. One 

 of his grandfathers was Maj.-Gen. Silas Casey, and the other was 

 Robert W. Weir, for 50 years professor of drawing at the United 

 States Military Academy. After a year in the Sheffield Scientific 

 School of Yale University he entered the Military Academy at West 

 Point. There he was a high-stand man through the four years of 

 his course. Upon his graduation in 1879 ^is position in his class ad- 

 mitted him to the Corps of Engineers, and by the time he retired from 

 active duty in 191 2 he had reached the rank of colonel. 



Astronomy was the field in which the young lieutenant did his 

 earliest scientific work. His first military assignment took him to 

 the Engineer and Submarine Mining School at Willet's Point, now 

 Fort Totten at one of the entrances to New York harbor; here he 

 made a specialty of theoretical and applied astronomy, to such good 

 effect that in 1882, when Prof. Simon Newcomb led an expedition to 

 the Cape of Good Hope to observe the transit of Venus, Lieutenant 

 Casey was a member of the party and acted as assistant astronomer. 

 He was also a member of the Greer County Commission, which went 

 to Texas in 1886 to mark the boundary lines between a portion of what 

 was then the Indian Territory and the State of Texas. 



* The writer wishes to acknowledge his deep obligation to Clara Cutler Chapin, 

 who prepared the biographical sketch, and made many helpful suggestions relating 

 to other portions of the manuscript. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 94, No. 3 



I 



