Laroche, took a paternal charge of him, and Latreille was indebted to the friendship of this gentleman and his family for the comforts and amenities of a home. A medical practitioner in his native town, M. But the gentleness of his disposition, and attractive manners, secured for his boyhood several affectionate protectors, who did not relax their exertions in his favour till he was enabled, in some measure, to provide for himself. Indeed he himself says that he seemed born to misfortune and obscurity. His parents were descended from an honourable family but their death left him an orphan at an early age, and apparently with very slender means of subsistence. November 1762, at Brives, a small town on the river Correze (a tributary of the Dordogne), in theĭepartment of the same name, which formed a part of the province of Limosin. Pierre-André Latreille was born on the 29th Latreille lived in most eventful times, and it is not to be supposedīut that many occurrences affecting his interests and the tenor of his life befell him besides those with which we have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted, and which might be well worthy of relation. Therefore, be deficient in regard to the less important incidents of his life, which, in such cases, are seldom considered destitute of interest, although they have no immediate connexion with the causes of the individual's celebrity. President, but we are not aware that this has yet
Society of France, of which he was the honorary Audouin, an eminent student in the same department of science, has promised a historical notice of Latreille for the Annals of the Entomological It is much to be regretted that no detailed biography of an individual so celebrated for his attainments in the branch of study to which he devoted himself, has yet been laid before the public. This department of Natural History seems to have been admitted by the general consent of all competent judges every student was accustomed to look to him as a guide and instructor and the most skilful, as well as the most inexperienced, have every where united in doing him homage as the "facile princeps entomologorum."
Almost from the date of hisįirst publication till his death, his superiority in Particular epochs in the earlier stages of Entomology, so may that of Latreille be employed to signalize the most flourishing period of the science in more recent times. As the names of Swammerdam, Linnæus, and Fabricius, have been respectively used to indicate