SCARABS Va’s hoté, tey yenar ahey Occasional Issue Number 16 June, 2005 Mr. Fall & Me WITHIN THIS ISSUE By Arthur V. Evans H. C. Fall ............................ 1 1600 Nottoway Avenue Richmand, VA 23227 U.S.A. Collecting Trip Archive .. 7 [email protected] Fall’s Diplotaxis Names ... 8 During a field trip to southeastern Proof Reading Scarabs .. 13 Arizona in the summer of 1974, it hit me like, well, a ton of beetles. It The Great Dung Debate 14 was then and there that I decided to Latin America Scarab focus my life-long fascination for Meeting ............................ 16 insects on just one group: beetles. A year later my passion for beetles became even more finely tuned. I wanted to work on scarab beetles. But my newfound passion for scarabs wasn’t just about collecting beetles. I wanted to know everything about them, their distributions, relationships, and natural histories. At the time I was employed as a student worker at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. There I could indulge my curiosity, not only by scanning one The Doctor In All His Glory of the largest beetle collections in California, but also by poring over the scarab fauna of California and EDITORS the museum’s fabulous library, Arizona. replete with tomes and scientific Rich Cunningham [email protected] journals, many of which date back to As my research progressed and my the mid-1800s. I was free to wander collection of scarab papers grew, Barney Streit the stacks at will to peruse, choose, the names of certain coleopterists, barneystreit@hotmail. and photocopy articles of interest. As beetle workers to the uninitiated, com a denizen of the southwest, I decided kept coming up again and again. Bill Warner that it would be most prudent to LeConte, Horn, Casey, and Fall. [email protected] narrow my literature searches to They were all long gone, but their writings were still fresh and know more about him, I tracked compelling, as if they had only down a copy of Arnold Mallis’ recently been written. “H.C. Fall, American Entomologists, where I Tyngsboro, Mass.” always caught found a portrait of Fall and a brief my eye because of the name of the biography. The black and white town where he penned his papers. picture revealed to me a handsome, But later I came across some of his grandfatherly, and mustachioed earlier works addressed in “Pasadena, gentleman with kind, yet somewhat Calif.” That was quite literally much tired eyes. His short-cropped hair closer to home. was white, parted to one side, and worn high on his head. According Nestled in the west end of the San to the biography Fall was born in Gabriel Valley, Pasadena is just Farmington, New Hampshire in north of Los Angeles and on the 1862, the son of Orin Tenney Fall eastern edge of the Arroyo Seco. and Mary Ann Hayes Fall. He was This seasonal river basin flows out interested in nature at an early age, of the San Gabriel Mountains to the a pursuit encouraged by his mother. north and is better known to millions His only sibling, Katharine, recalled of college football fans as the home that his beetle collection literally of the Rose Bowl. Upstream lies the began when her brother found a Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where longhorn beetle at the age of 16. scientists and engineers use the latest Thus was the genesis of what would technologies to remotely control become the largest private beetle robots on Mars. But in the early collection in the United States, with days, the Arroyo was only sparsely over 200,000 specimens representing populated with homes, farms, and about 15,000 species from America, orchards. The not-so-insignificant north of Mexico. patches of natural riparian woodland and chaparral that remained were the Mr. Fall attended public schools in happy hunting grounds for many a Dover before entering Dartmouth bug collector up through the early College in 1880. He graduated part of the last century, including at the head of his class in 1884. Fall. Today, only with considerable After a brief stint teaching high effort, you can find remnants of these school mathematics and physics in habitats along roadsides and among Chicago, Fall was forced to move to the patchwork of tiny green spaces California for health reasons in 1889. that are peppered along the canyon There he took up teaching chemistry bottom. and physics, first at Pomona High School, and then later at Pasadena While earning my Bachelors and High School. At Pasadena, Fall Masters degrees at California served as the head of the Science State University, Long Beach, I Department, a post he held until learned that Mr. Fall was one of the his retirement in 1917. He returned greatest American coleopterists of to New England in 1918 and lived all time. He described nearly 1,500 the rest of his life with his sister new species, many of them from Katharine, and her husband, Carl Page 2 California and the west. Curious to Adams Richmond. I wish I could have seen Southern California pulled out the drawers of the main through Fall’s eyes, before the beetle collection and found beetles valleys and coastal plains were from Fall’s collection segregated completely sealed over in asphalt from the others in color-coded and concrete. Much of the native trays. Each of Fall’s beetles was coastal chaparral, riparian and oak meticulously mounted and labeled. woodlands where he and others This did not surprise me since all of collected insects has long since his papers were also written in the been replaced with all manner of same careful manner. exotic plantings that are of little or After moving to Richmond, Virginia no use to native beetles and other in 2000, I began working with Jim insects. Hogue to develop a book proposal for the University of California From the 1980s to nearly the end Press. An Introduction to California of the last century, Mr. Fall and his Beetles, published in 2004, provides beetles drifted in and out of my life. an overview of the state’s beetle While director of the Insect Zoo fauna and their study, including brief at the Natural History Museum of biographical sketches of some of Los Angeles County, my nascent the coleopterists who worked in the In the It’s A Small World interest in the history of entomology region, including Mr. Fall. He was Department, Editor Barney in Southern California began to take the first resident of California to was born in Pomona; his hold. In August of 1999, on my way make significant contributions to our father attendend Pomona to Ottawa, Canada, I stopped in understanding of the state’s unique High School. Cambridge, Massachusetts to pay a fauna. A correspondent and friend visit to the Entomology Department of George Horn, Fall was a direct of the Museum of Comparative link between the very beginnings Zoology at Harvard University. of American coleopterology and The insect collection there is a the researchers of the 20th century. touchstone for many entomologists And, he knew the Coleoptera of studying North American insects. America north of Mexico as few And it is the holiest of holy places have known them or, in this day for beetles in North America. of specialization, ever will. But Here were the collections of John his most lasting contribution was LeConte, the father of American that through an impressive list coleopterology, and George Horn, of publications and prodigious LeConte’s friend, colleague, and correspondence, Fall inspired dozens successor. Mounted on the wall of his contemporaries, amateurs of the Coleoptera Department is a and professionals alike - as well as large portrait of Fall, the same one countless students of entomology that accompanies his biography - right up until his death. I was in American Entomologists. inspired by him as well and wanted Here, too, was his collection. Fall to know more about his life, his bequeathed his beetles and other influences, how and where he insects to Harvard where he had worked, and his travels across the spent so much time comparing his United States and Canada. But the specimens to the types of LeConte, format of the California beetle book Horn, and others. One by one I and other pressures dictated that I Page 3 Henry Clinton Fall (1862-1939) would have to wait for another time displacement behavior. I started a to explore the life of this interesting new project! And what could be and productive man. more rewarding than settling in on a project that probably had few In December of 2004, feeling prospects for generating any kind the weight of looming deadlines of remuneration! Nevertheless, I of several book projects, I did needed to sate my curiosity about what anyone would do who Fall’s life and entomological Page 4 is prone to chronic bouts of work and delve beyond the well- chosen words written of him by little and nothing I did not know his contemporaries after his death. already. Even on the Museum of What was his childhood like? Comparative Zoology’s website, What did he study in school and there is barely a mention of Fall, at college? Why did he study to except for a short paragraph to say become a teacher instead of an that his important beetle collection entomologist? Why did he choose is deposited there. In spite of the to teach in Chicago? What was enormity of his contributions and the health issue that drove him influences in American entomology, to southern California and what there is little to be said of him did he do there for nearly three on the web with regards to his years before resuming his teaching entomological work.