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* LE CONTE. He devoted his attention particularly to the study of entomology', and became widely recog- nized as an authority in that subject. In the Collections of the Smithsonian Institution are published his Classification of the Colroptera of yorth America (part i. 1862; part ii. 1S7.3) ; List of Coleoptcra of North America (1866); and ew flpcries of S'orth American Coleoptcra (part i. ISiiil; part ii. 1873). LE CONTE, JcSEPH (1823-1901). An emi- nent American geologist, tlie son of Lewis Le Conle. He was born in Liberty County. Ga., and giaduated at Franklin College in 1841. After receiving a medical degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, he practiced as physician for a time at Macon, Ga. In 1850 he entered Harvard University for the purpose of studying under Agassiz. and ac- companied (he latter on a scientific and explor- ing expedition to Florida. After finishing his course of study, he sened successively as pro- fessor of natural sciences in Oglethorpe Univer- sity, professor of natural histoiy in Franklin College, and from 1856 to 1869 as professor of chemistry and geology in the University of South Carolina. In 1869 he was appointed to the chair of geology in the University of California, which office he retained until his death. Professor Le Conte did much to popu- larize the study of geology in America, and also contributed valuable descriptive and theoretical papers to geological literature. He was elected vice-president of the National Con- gress of Geologists in 1891, and in the following year president of the American Association for "the Advancement of Science. The more impor- tant of his publications are: Religion and Science (1873); Elements of Geoloff;/ (1878); Compend of Geology (1884); Evolution: Its ynttire, Its Eiidenees, and Its liclntion to lieligious Thought (1887). Besides shorter pa- pers contributed to geological journals, he wrote many essays on biology, philosophy, optics, and other subjects. LE CONTE, Lewis (1782-18.38). An Ameri- can naturalist, father of .Joseph Le Conte. He was bom near Shrewsbury. X. .J., of Huguenot descent: graduated at Columbia in 1790: studied medicine with the celebrated Dr. David Hosack, and settled in Georgia, taking care of his father's estate and establishing a botanical garden, where he cultivated rare bulbous plants obtained from the Cape of Good Hope. He devoted considerable time to matliematics and zoillogy, as well as botanv. His manuscripts were lost at the burn- ing of Cohmibia, S. C, in ISG.i. LECONTE DE LISLE, le-k5xt' de lei, Charles M.rie (1818-94). The greatest French poet of the modem Parnassian School, born at Saint Paul, on the He de Bourbon, now Reunion, October 23. 1818. His youth in the tropics fostered his inborn love for the beauty of nature, but his restless imagination urged him to travel. Declining to follow his father's occupation as a planter, he went to France, studied law at Kennes, traveled widely, and at thirty settled in Paris. He presently sacrificed his paternal allow- ance by supporting a servile insurrection in Re- union. The only milestones in his uneventful life were the honors that slowly came to him. a po.st in the Luxembourg Library (1873), officer's 67 LECOTJVKEUB. rank in the Legion of Honor, election to the Academy (1887). He became the centre of a school of young poets who recognized in the genial friend the master's authority. His first noteworthy voluise, which waited several years for a publisher, was Poemes antiques (1852), followed in 18.54 by Poemes et poesies, and in 1862 by Poemes barbnres, which won an academic prize of 10,000 francs, and by Poemes tragiqtics in 1884. A posthumously published volume of Derniers poemes (1895) contains sev- eral interesting critical essays on Leconte de Lisle's lyric forerunners. He was also the mov- ing spirit of a series of volumes. Lc parnasse con- temporain (1866, 1869. 1876), in which the poets of his school practiced the refinements of their art. Here some of his own most remarkable poems first appeared. Leconte de Lisle con- tributed also to literature the first fairly ac- curate translations in French of the Iliad ( 18G7), the Orphic Eiimns (1869), Hesiod (1869), the Odi/ssey (1870). Horace (1873), Sophocles (1877), and Euripides (1885). He wrote also two dramas in imitation of the Greek, Les Erinnycs (1872) and L'ApolIonide, based on the Ion of Euripides. The earlier of these transla- tions won Leconte de Lisle a small pension from the Empire, and from these classical studies he drew the marrow of his exquisite culture, the pagan element in which appears least attractively in an Ilisloire du christianisme and a Catichisme n'publicain, both published anonymously. The poems are objective in tone and scholarly in purpose, seeking, as he said, to unite, if not to mingle, art and science. His aim through all his original verse is to show the gradual unfolding of the ideal life and the Teachings of religious thought into the legendai-y past and the hidden future of the race. He is the most stately, brilliant, self-possessed of French poets, with perfect control of all the processes of his art; but ethically a poet of protest and disillusion- ment, pessimistic, skeptical. He died at Lou- veciennes, .July 17, 1894. For criticism of Leconte de Lisle, consult: Bruneti^re, youveaux essais sur la littcrature contcmporaine (Paris, 1895) ; Bourget, you- veaux essais de psychologic (Contcmporaine (ib., 1887) Lemaitre, Contemporains (vol. ii., 12th ed., ib., 1890) ; and Pellissier. Mourement lit- tcraire (trans., Xew York, 1898). Biographi- cal reminiscences are in lierue des Deux ilondes, ?Ia.v, 189."). and lievue Bleue, June, 1895. LECOtrVKETJB, le-koo'vrer', Adrienxe (1092-1730). A French actress, celebrated alike for her brilliant dramatic gifts and the tragic ending of her life of pleasure. She was born near Epernay. April 5, 1692. Her father, a hat- ter, went to Paris to better his trade. Near the tlicatre of the Comtdie Francaise, Adricnne. then a grown girl, and a laundress, organized, among the neighbors, a little private theatre, which was so successful as to draw from the comedians of the Royal Theatre a complaint against it as an unauthorized rival. The amateur performances thus closed, .Adrienne was taken by a kind prior to the actor Legrand. who was struck with her talent and beauty, and gave her lessons in elocu- tion. She played at Lille, Strassbnrg, and elsewhere, and after some years of provincial successes was called in 1717 to the Comedie Francaise.* §he at once won the first place