John B. Smitli as a Coleopterist 



Charles W. Leng 



To those who knew Professor Smith in his later years as an 

 authority on noctuids, an economic entomologist, and a college 

 professor, it may seem strange to recall the night more than thirty 

 years ago when he was nominated a member of the Brooklyn 

 Entomological Society and recommended by F. G. Schaupp, his 

 sponsor, as a young man capable of making drawings of beetles. 

 Such, however, is the fact, and my first acquaintance with him 

 was as a coleopterist and artist, and among the earliest of his 

 published works are drawings in the Brooklyn Bulletin signed 

 John B. Smith, illustrating papers by various authors, the first of 

 all being the plate to Schaupp's "Description of the Larvae of 

 Pterostichus."^ 



As early as 1882, short notes began to appear in the Brooklyn 

 Bulletin on Coleoptera, and for the next eight years Smith con- 

 tinued to be an active worker in that order, working first with 

 Schaupp, later with Dr. George H. Horn, still later with E. A. 

 Schwarz, with whom he was naturally in close touch while a 

 resident of Washington. He was a prolific author and some of 

 his work is still imperfectly indexed, as, for instance, the descrip- 

 tion of the larva of Brachyacantha ursina in an article entitled 

 " Ants' Nests and their Inhabitants," in Am. Nat., XX, pp. 679- 

 687. This was the first description of the larva of any species of 

 the genus Brachyacantha, but is apparently not indexed under 

 any heading in the Zoological Record. It is possible that other 

 notes contained in papers of a general character are still over- 

 looked, but as far as known nineteen articles relating to Coleoptera 

 can be enumerated as in the list prepared by Mr. Grossbeck, the 



"Bull. Br. Ent. Soc, III, Feb., 1881. 



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