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These papers consist of correspondence concerning the transfer of Scudder's insect collection from the Hayden Survey to the United States National Museum; notebooks
of Tertiary insect drawings; and a catalog and list of fossil insects, and notes.
Historical Note:
Samuel H. Scudder (1837-1911) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied entomology at Williams College from which he received an A.B. degree in 1857. Williams later
awarded him A.M. and D.Sc. degrees in 1860 and 1890, respectively. He also received a B.S. degree in 1862 from Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School where he studied with Louis
Agassiz.
Scudder remained at Harvard for two years as an assistant to Agassiz; from 1864 to 1870 he held various positions at the Boston Society of Natural History. From 1870 to
1879, Scudder held no salaried position except for the several months he spent with the Hayden Survey in 1877 in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. From 1879 to 1882 Scudder served
as Assistant Librarian at Harvard University, and from 1883 to 1886 he was Editor of the magazine Science. From 1886 to 1892 Scudder was a paleontologist with the United
States Geological Survey (USGS) where he specialized in fossil insects. While with the USGS he produced an index to the known fossil insects of the world. He was a leading
authority on American Orthoptera.
Adephagous and clavicorn Coleoptera from the Tertiary deposits at Florissant, Colorado, with descriptions of a few other forms and a systematic list of the nonrhynchophorous Tertiary Coleoptera of North America
Brief guide to the commoner butterflies of the northern United States and Canada; being an introduction to a knowledge of their life-histories, by Samuel Hubbard Scudder