MEMOIK OF RALPH DUPTJY LACOE 513 



types ; nearly 5,000 specimens of fossil insects, of which over 200 are 

 types, and 400 specimens of fossil vertebrates. It also contained a large 

 amount of unpublished plant material, besides several thousands of 

 insects partially reported on by Doctor Scudder. 



Besides his great gift to the National Museum, Mr Lacoe also donated 

 a large collection of fossil plants, mostly labeled and arranged in cases, 

 together with about 5,000 specimens representing 1,200 species of fossil 

 mollusca, to the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, of which 

 for a number of years he was trustee and paleontological curator, and 

 in whose welfare and active work he was deeply concerned. 



Lacoe's scientific work did not cease with the donation of the collec- 

 tions. Even during and after the installation of the great type and 

 study series in Washington he continued making important additions 

 to both the fossil plant and insect sections, the accessions being obtained 

 from regions or horizons of especial importance from the biological, 

 geographical, or stratigraphical standpoint. At the time of his fatal ill- 

 ness negotiations were under way for the acquisition of plant material to 

 assist in the correlation of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Carbon- 

 iferous formations with those of the Appalachian region. 



In the questions of the origin and early history of the principal insect 

 families, as well as the true relationship of the insects found in the ear- 

 lier formations, he entertained the keenest interest. Believing that the 

 current speculative phylogenetic generalizations drawn from Mesozoic 

 and Paleozoic insect remains were uncertain and unsatisfactory, as well 

 as desultory, he was strongly of the opinion that the true relationship 

 and paleontological history of the insect orders must first be worked out 

 as thoroughly as possible from the fossils in the later formations. After 

 that they should be traced backward step by step through the earlier 

 formations of the Tertiary and Mesozoic, the remains of each earlier 

 epoch being interpreted in the light of the knowledge first gained from 

 the later period. The first step in his plan was to make ample collec- 

 tions from the insect localities hitherto discovered in the Tertiary. In 

 this most important and philosophical line of research he had already 

 gotten so far as to secure large collections, embracing several thousands 

 of specimens from the classical type localities to the Upper Rhine region, 

 and he was making arrangements for extensive collecting from the Ter- 

 tiary insectiferous beds of the western states when his cherished hopes 

 and plans were cut short by death. 



As we have seen, Lacoe's chief services to science were those of a patron 

 in the finest and best sense of that term. His aim was not to make gifts 

 of large sums of money or of gross collections to some museum, university, 

 or scientific society. Had he done thus he could hardly have accom- 



