292 [Nov. 16, 
Lesley.] 
what gives the lie to this vulgar prejudice. He was as fine a mathemati- 
cian as he was minutely true with the microscope. His wide and varied 
learning checked any tendency to narrowness in study, and gave him a 
power and richness of language which reacted on his reason to enrich it 
with a copious store of generous and noble ideas. The infinite variety of 
insect forms was not more attractive to him than the infinite variety of 
words in the languages which he studied ; nor the infinite variety of myths 
with which the imagination of past ages has attempted to explain, or at least 
1o portray, the mysteries of the Universe. Will it excite surprise then in 
any well equipped mind, that the skill which nature gave him to arrange 
facts of the organic world, relationships of numbers, and the ideas of men, 
availed him quite as well in the leasing of his father’s storehouses in New 
York, the reorganization of the wards of an army hospital, and the conduct 
of the business of the United States Mint? 
All this went together, and comes quite natural to a superior genius. It 
matters little what the man regarded as work, and what he regarded as 
play ; his work was creation and recreation in one, and his recreation was 
all good work. Every hobby a true genius mounts becomes under his man- 
agement a trained war-horse or sagacious hunter. The contradictory 
occupations of such a man would be a reproach to less gifted mortals ; but 
in the career of such a man they are merely alternately diverging and con- 
verging careers of usefulness. The recognition of this truth by Major Le 
Conte was gratefully acknowledged by his son in narrating such anec- 
dotes as the following: 
Young Le Conte was put to school at St. Mary’s College, in George- 
town, D. C. The discipline of the class-room was very strict. Everybody 
was kept to silent study ; none could leave his seat without command or 
permission, The Major visited the school to learn how John was getting 
on. The master said that he was good and diligent, but regretted to add 
that he was too much interested in a sort of knowledge which lay apart 
from his regular studies. He hoped that the father would endeavor to re- 
press these inclinations in his boy. he Major asked the master what they 
were. The master replied—a love of birds and bugs, shells and stones, in 
fact, everything that grew, or moved in the air, on the ground, or in the 
water. If he indulged in such pursuits he would never excel as a mathema- 
tician or linguist. ‘‘Is my son behindhand then in his studies?’ asked the 
father. ‘‘No,’’ replied the master, ‘‘he recites well, and is as good a scholar 
as the best of them ; but we wish him to excel all the rest, as he evidently 
might do if he gave his undivided attention to the studies of his class.”’ 
a 
“Tam not of that opinion,’’ quoth the Major, withthe twinkle in his eye 
for which he was famous among his cronies—all now dead——‘‘ I am not at all 
of that opinion, and I must request that you will not discourage my son in 
obtaining a kind of knowledge which I have myself pursued all my lifes 
and which I believe will make all the other kinds of learning which John 
will get here all the more useful and noble.” 
