Ralph D II pity Lacoc. — Hay den. 339 
]\Ir. Lacoe preferred to be student rather than a writer, but 
he has left the seal of his authority as an expert in his special 
department. Prof. J. P. Lesley, state geologist of Pennsyl- 
vania, in his geological report of Wyoming, Lackawanna and 
Luzerne counties. Vol. G7, Pennsylvania Survey, gives him full 
credit and the highest praise for his assisstance to the survey. 
In referring to the "Buried Valley of Wyoming" he savs : "1 
am indebted for most of the records of drilling by the various 
mining companies to Mr. R. D. Lacoe of Pittston, who has done 
so much through his magnificent collections to advance our 
knowledge of the coal flora of Pennsylvania and other states." 
Prof. Scudder, in his valuable work on American Fossil 
Cockroaches, 1895, says: "When in 1879 I published my Pal- 
eozoic Cockroaches, in which a revision of the species of the 
whole world was attempted, I had seen but nineteen specimens 
from North America belonging to seventeen species and seven 
genera. To-day more than three hundred American specimens 
have passed under my eye, besides fifty from the Triassic 
rocks and a very few from the Tertiary series, and from the 
Paleozoic series alone there are here recognized one hundred 
and thirty-two species belonging to fourteen genera. This re- 
cent extension of our knowledge of our Paleozoic cockroaches 
is very largely due to the exploitations of two localities — one 
in West Virginia, through the instrumentality of Mr. R. D. La- 
coe of Pittston, Pa., the other in Ohio, through the labours of 
Mr. Samuel Huston of Steubenville, the W^est Virginia collec- 
tion numbering 56 species and 5 genera." Prof. Scudder also 
describes 18 specimens of as many species in Mr. Lacoe's col- 
lection found by him in the Boston mine near Pittston. One 
of these was named in honor of Mr. Lacoe, "'Ncymylacns 
lacocana." 
Mr. Lacoe was a Fellow of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, elected to membership .August, 1882, 
and made a Fellow of the American Geological Society Decem- 
ber, 1889. It was thought that he was also a member of the 
Geological Society of London. 
In 1882 Mr. Lacoe became a member of the W}oming His- 
torical and Geological Society located at Wilkes Barre within 
ten miles of his home. His interest immediately manifested 
itself in a practical way by adding to its geological collections. 
