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1883] 291 (Lesley, 
Mr. Lesley desired to express his feeling that while the Society has sus- 
tained a serious loss in the death of one of its estimable Vice- Presidents, 
science has suffered a lamentable blow by the withdrawal of one of the 
best investigators and one of the truest philosophers that ever did duty in 
her service, Not a common soldier only has fallen—not a non-commis- 
sioned officer—not a mere colonel of a single regiment in her army—but a 
general of high rank, a leader of forces, one who could plan and execute 
the manwuvres of a large and long campaign, an organizer, a ruler in her 
realm. 
My private grief, said the speaker, at the loss of an old and intimate per- 
sonal friend gives me no peculiar right to tell his virtues and abilities in 
this hall where he has been known and honored for so many years; but it 
gives me the power to speak of these virtues and abilities with the confi- 
dence of absolute knowledge. Others have known and loved him, and will 
regret his death, and will speak of him affectionately and respectfully in- 
side and outside of this hall. But it was my good fortune to be one of his 
special companions for the past thirty years; and he often expressed the 
wish that if I survived him I would place on record some memorial of his 
life. Once, when I felt. vigorous and hopeful, I promised to gratify his 
wish, although he was the younger of the two, and had a natural right to 
give what he desired to receive. But now, how is it possible to do more 
than say: ‘Le Conte is dead, the precocious youth, the affectionate son, 
husband, father and friend, the just and truth-loving man, the accurate 
and precise observer, a master in the divine art of classifying facts, a per- 
fectly trained and nobly developed genius in science.”’ 
Le Conte is a famous name in American science. The foundations of its 
fame were laid by the father, and built up by the son. Both these have 
passed away from the eastern shore of the continent ; but on its western 
shore two brothers, children of the father’s brother, prolong and enhance 
the reputation of the name, 
A memorial of the life of our fellow member and friend would be incom- 
plete without a personal description of old Major Le Conte, to whose vig- 
orous intellect, excellent common sense, and great experience in zoologi- 
cal studies, John owed not only his extraordinary abilities, his aptitude for 
mathematics, his eye for form and color, his exactness, his imagination, 
his love of the study of languages, his taste for historical metaphysics, and 
especially mythology, and his pronounced capacity for practically putting 
things in order and managing affairs, but also the opportunity for cultivat- 
ing and displaying all these various, and, as many people vainly imagine, 
contradictory mental powers, 
I ray: vainly imagine, For, it is a vulgar prejudice to suppose that a life 
spent in counting the number of segments and legs of bugs, and describing 
the microscopic foliation of their antennee, incapacitates a man for com- 
prehending the Méc nique Celeste, or the writings of Plotinus; for the 
enjoyment of the Mahabahrata, or the safe conduct of his hereditary 
estate. What stamps the character of Le Conte as a genius is precisely 
