38 Bulletin oj the Brooklyn Entomological Society voi. viii 



as a careful student could find time for, l^ut he covered the whole 

 field. Even at that, he set up 20 j^enera of beetles, and of his 

 species 104 are in the American check list. Friends sent him 

 specimens from , Philadelphia, New Orleems and West Indies. 

 His types, unfortunately, have suffered from relabeling and other 

 misuse by subsequent owners. 



At Upsala he found a student working for ten years previ- 

 ously on similar lines, Chas. De Geer, whose interest 

 De G. in entomology leaned toward the economic side. This 

 is the only contemporary of his earlier fame. De Geer 

 named 22 American species. Of all Linne's scholars the one of 

 about the least promise became the greatest. Johann Christian 

 Schmidt was a Danish lad who caused his parents no 

 Fab. little anxiety. Going to Upsala, he neglected the 

 curriculum as much as possible, but on Linne's lectures 

 he studied night and day. Upon graduation, realizing that 

 nature study was too broad a field for any one, he confined him- 

 self to insects alone — the first entomologist. His prominent 

 life endured about 30 years from 1775. He was feted by all 

 Europe, lived like a prince, and, it must be confessed, put on 

 more airs than a grand duke. Many volumes of descriptions 

 of insects came from his pen. Of American beetles, 299 species 

 bear his name, and of his coleopterous genera 43 concern 

 America. At Upsala he latinized his name with the additional 

 aggrandisement that Faber, the latin for Schmidt, was discarded 

 for the more sonorous "Fabricius. " In London Fabrieius found 

 a devotee of unusual talent.- Dru Drury was a gold- 

 Drury. smith 55 years old when they met. He spent almost 

 his entire fortune on two volumes devoted to exotic 

 lepidoptera, the colored plates of which were reprinted in 1845 

 and are still in print. He cared little for beetles, but named 10 

 species of showy American forms. He had good correspondents 

 and got a great deal of American material, giving most of his 

 American beetles to his friend Fabricius. Most of such types 

 are now in Kiel, where Fabricius became professor of Natural 

 History. The collection of the British Museum was studied, 

 and every specirnen bearing a Fabricius label is still jealously 

 preserved unchanged. 



