74 



SCmNGE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 160. 



and was commissioned as Surgeon of the 

 Second California Infantry, September 23, 

 1865. His services terminated with that of 

 the staff of his regiment, April 16, 1866. 



In the course of his service he spent 

 some time in California, Arizona and New 

 Mexico, in territory which was at that time 

 almost unknown to collectors or students of 

 Coleoptera, or, indeed, any order of insects. 

 From the beginning Dr. Horn had been 

 interested in natural history, and his tastes 

 in this direction had been encouraged and 

 stimulated by some of his teachers in the 

 High School. The opportunity given by 

 his service in these unknown territories was 

 not neglected, and large collections of in- 

 sects, principally Coleoptera, were made. In 

 the course of his collecting he met with 

 many ludicrous and some dangerous experi- 

 ences ; but he gradually interested many of 

 the soldiers in his work, and some of the 

 rarities in his collection were taken, accord- 

 ing to his statements, by privates who 

 picked them up and brought them to him. 

 This was the most extensive field experi- 

 ence gained by the doctor, and throughout 

 his life he was always much more interested 

 in the fauna of this particular territory 

 than in that of any other. His familiarity 

 with the region and the peculiar difficulties 

 of collecting in it led him to attach unusual 

 interest and value to specimens originating 

 there, and, as a result, his collection was 

 most complete for this particular fauna. 

 Dr. Horn was naturally an original stu- 

 dent, and began his work in Entomology 

 in 1860, even before graduating from the 

 Medical School. Yet his first paper was on 

 Molluscs, not insects, though his first de- 

 scriptions of new Coleoptera appeared only 

 a few months later. 



On his return to Philadelphia he estab- 

 lished himself as a physician, with an office 

 at the then residence of his father, at the 

 corner of Fourth and Poplar streets, and 

 this office he retained until his death, al- 



though for some time previously he had not 

 been practicing. When he began work his 

 father, Mr. Philip Horn, carried on business 

 as a druggist, and back of the store the doc- 

 tor had a little room for consultations. This 

 also he retained long after the drug business 

 had passed out of his father's hands. 



The neighborhood in which the doctor 

 settled was a populous one, and he soon be- 

 gan to make a specialty of the diseases of 

 women and children, gradually acquiring a 

 large obstetrical practice, and being often 

 called in consultation in difficult or unusual - 

 cases. 



Dr. Horn never married, and much of his 

 time, when not actually engaged in the out- 

 side business of his profession, was passed in 

 a large room on the second floor, in which he 

 had an iron bedstead, two or three chairs, a 

 huge desk, a small table or two, and shelves 

 and cabinets wherever there was room to 

 place them. The desk, except for a small 

 space near the middle of one side, was always 

 piled with books, papers and specimens in 

 boxes of all kinds. The chairs were piled 

 with material of the same character; the 

 shelves and cabinets were filled to over- 

 flowing. "When a visitor arrived whose 

 entomological taste entitled him to admis- 

 sion to this apartment he either sat on the 

 bed,*or a chair was cleared for his accommo- 

 dation. Not unusually, the bed was more 

 or less filled with books and papers, and 

 everything was always in such condition 

 that scientific work could be resumed at a 

 moment's notice whenever the doctor came 

 in from a round of calls or had a few mo- 

 ments to spare during office hours. A physi- 

 cian in active practice does not have much 

 time during the day, and in the special line 

 in which Dr. Horn was engaged night calls 

 are not infrequent ; so that his hours of 

 sleep were frequently more or less irregular 

 and always scant. When no calls took 

 himi away he would work until midnight or 

 long afterwards, over his collections. Almost 



