John B. Smith as a Lepidopterist 



John A. Grossbeck 



On more than one occasion I have heard Professor Smith say : 

 " I was a coleopterist, I am nozv a lepidopterist," and " My col- 

 lection of Coleoptera was sold to the National Museum " — from 

 all of which one would naturally infer that, like many another, 

 Professor Smith began the study and collection of one order of 

 insects and later branched ofif to another one. But such seems 

 not to be exactly the case. True, aside from being an economic 

 entomologist. Professor Smith was before his death a lepidop- 

 terist ; but in his earlier days he seems to have been simultaneously 

 interested as much in beetles as in butterflies and moths. 



In compiling a list of his published writings I find that his first 

 two contributions to entomological literature appeared in 1882 

 and were entitled respectively " Remarks on the Generic Charac- 

 ters of the Noctuidae " and " Coleopterological Notes." The first 

 appeared in the Canadian Entomologist for June, the second in 

 the Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society for August. 

 Thus it appears that his first paper was in the Lepidoptera, and in 

 the family to which he in later years confined his attention. 



But though Professor Smith began and ended with the Noc- 

 tuidae, he wrote much in other families of the Lepidoptera, par- 

 ticularly during the three years of his connection with the Na- 

 tional Museum, though even before this he published in the 

 Brooklyn Bulletin such papers as his " Synopsis of the Genera of 

 the North American Rhopalocera " and his " Synopsis of the 

 North American species of Satyrus, with notes on the species 

 collected on the North Transcontinental Survey," entering thereby 

 into the general spirit of those in charge of the Bulletin who 

 desired to make that publication useful to beginners by introduc- 

 ing a series of synoptic papers. 



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