Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/35

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MEMOIR OF LATREILLE.
35

that, as being the object of the most assiduous and tender care, he was happy in spite of his sufferings and infirmities. This devoted affection was never for an instant relaxed, and he saw renewed, in his own case, that beautiful example of filial piety which he had so often witnessed in the same place which he himself inhabited in his turn. In fact, in the very same house, the tenderness of a daughter had prolonged the days of a blind and infirm father. This old man was De Lamarck, the friend of M. Latreille, whom he succeeded, and whom he called his adopted father, when taking a last farewell of him when he was on the brink of the grave."

But his increasing debility did not prevent him altogether from prosecuting his favourite occupation. In fact, several memoirs on insects, and no inconsiderable portion of his last work, the "Cours d'Entomologie," were written as he lay in bed propped up with pillows. Even in the beginning of the week on which he died, eager to withdraw his mind, if possible, from his sufferings by engaging in study, he corrected the proofs of his last production, namely, a description of a new genus of Crustacea, which he named Prosopistome. But this could not last; nature at length gave way, and he died on the morning of the 6th February, 1832, aged seventy years and three months.

Among the many individuals and learned societies who bewailed Latreille's death, the Entomological Society claimed the preference in doing honour to their late president. It was determined that the