LATREILLE, Pierre-André (1762-1833), French naturalist, was born in humble circumstances at Brives-la-Gaillarde, now in the department of Corrèze, France, on November 29, 1762. His abilities attracted the attention of the Baron d’Espagnac, who in 1778 placed him at the Collège Lemoine at Paris, where the Abbé Haiiy was at that time a teacher. Having chosen the ecclesiastical career, he was admitted to priestly orders in 1786, and in the same year retired to Brives, devoting all the leisure which the discharge of his professional duties allowed to the study of entomology. In 1788 he returned to Paris and found means of making himself known to the leading naturalists there,—Fabricius, Olivier, Bose, Lamarck; his first important contribution to his special science, a “Mémoire sur les Mutilles découvertes en France,” contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Natural History in Paris, procured for him the honour of admission to that body, and of being made a corresponding member of the Linnean Society of London. At the Revolution he was compelled to quit Paris, and as a priest of conservative sympathies suffered considerable hardship; he lay for some time in prison at Bordeaux, and gained his liberty at last only through the intervention of the naturalists Bory de Saint-Vincent and Dargelas. His Precis des Caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel, appeared at Brives in 1796. In 1798 he became a corresponding member of the Institute, and at the same time was entrusted with the task of arranging the entomological collection at the recently organized “Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle” (Jardin des Plantes); in 1814 he succeeded Olivier as member of the Académie des Sciences, and in 1821 he was made a chevalier of the Legion ...